


Like This

by orphan_account



Series: Brothers [17]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Brothers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:10:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He kisses him back, and it’s the second time he feels genuinely happy today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like This

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically a Band-Aid for you all in response to that last nightmare I cranked out. Songs I would recommend for this chapter are: Playing God, Paramore; If You’re Gone, Matchbox 20; Lover, You Should Have Come Over, Jeff Buckley; Back in Your Head, Tegan and Sera; Dance Anthem of the 80’s, Regina Spektor; Maps, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Also, this chapter was so named based on some lines/sentences/paragraphs I slipped into it as well as a poem I heard awhile ago, which was titled the same thing and by a man called Rumi. I hope you appreciate this.

It's drizzling when he wakes up. His whole room looks like it's been painted in shades of gray a few moments after he opens his eyes, and its usual colors of green and blue take awhile to show themselves, to divide themselves out of the mass of stormy ash tinting his vision. It's cold, too, cold and autumn-like and dark and perfect, and his head feels heavy and sliced open where it lies. His stomach is a mess. His throat is dry and stinging. His eyes are sticky with old tears. He is alone.

Loki turns his face into his pillowcase when he remembers the events of last night, memories falling into his consciousness in a slow, painstaking descent. He feels the hem of his sweater ride up his back when he moves, feels the way the air in his room crawls along the base of his spine after his skin is exposed, feels the damp patch of sweat staining his pillow beneath his forehead, and for a long time, Loki just satisfies himself with sensing everything, how full his lungs are when he inhales and how breathless he gets when he exhales and how still everything is around him and how his eyes burn behind their swollen lids and how bad his tongue tastes and how empty his stomach is and how nauseous he feels and how his muscles ache with exertion and how dust mites dance before him when he stares into the feeble light shining through the gap in his curtains and how there isn't a sound to be heard besides the soft snuffling below him and how his heart is so fucking heavy it feels like it's falling out of his chest and through his bed and through the foundation of his house and into the core of the earth, and he's probably going to vomit all over his sheets if he doesn't get himself out of bed fast enough.

But Loki couldn't be bothered to do anything right now. The very idea of movement is making him all panicky inside, is bringing tears to his eyes and discord to his mind, and he realizes with a note of dread that he's  _here_  again.  _Here_ , at the very bottom of his soul; a place he hasn't traversed for  _years_  with the exception of last night. Here, he feels completely isolated. Here, he feels cold. Here, he feels hateful and lazy and unmotivated and unthought of and abstract and exhausted like he never will outside of this cage of himself. Here, he's in hell.

Loki  _does_  move eventually, though, but only because he has a rather important phone call to make. First, he pulls himself up into a sitting position, and as a reward for managing to do that, he lets himself cry into the neckline of his sweater and leans against his headboard for a few minutes. Then he has to get himself to swing his legs over the side of his bed, a task that proves to be none too difficult once gravity kicks in. As soon as his feet brush the carpet, Loki's got a husky huddling between his knees and seeking his affection, and it takes him quite awhile to put together that because Fenrir's  _here_  – in his room and  _not_  in the backyard, where he left him last night – Thor must have put him here. That means Thor came in his room while he was asleep.

That isn't a thing that happens in this house. People (Thors, mostly) end up  _dead_  that way.

Loki's not exactly sure how he feels about the ghost of Thor funking up his room, so he decides to feel angry. He runs his fingers through the sleek fur atop Fenrir's head, feels the way those coarse hairs slip past his digits and listens to the soft  _thump_ ,  _thump_ ,  _thump_  of the dog's tail whacking against the mattress.

After he's calmed himself enough in the smoothness of Fenrir's fur, Loki gives a great big, breathtaking sigh and lunges for his jeans, crumpled in a heap where he dropped them the night before. He wipes at his eyes and presses two circling, gently rubbing fingers into his stomach after he's fished his cellphone out of his pocket, and as he (painfully) crosses his legs Indian-style and beckons Fenrir up to sit beside him on the bed, he reads  _12:43_ off of his display screen and realizes that he slept for about fourteen hours. That's like him to do when he's on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Listening to the dial tone seems like it's the scariest thing Loki's ever done – that is, until he remembers that time he sat in a hospital bed with appendicitis and that time he sat in a hospital bed with bacterial pneumonia and that time he sat in a hospital bed with broken and cracked ribs and a fractured skull and a sprained leg and a shattered sense of identity. That puts everything into the objective sort of perspective Loki absolutely despises, mostly because it gives him a laundry list of reasons to hate himself for feeling things.

And then he's getting an earful of raspy, fatigue-laced, "Hello?", and before Loki's heart can catch up to him, he thinks to himself that Tony actually slept some. That's a thought that's supposed to make him feel better about life, but here comes his literary cardiovascular system reminding him that there are much worse things he could be focusing his attention on, like how he can't speak for whatever reason (and that's  _awful_ , because he should  _always_  be able to talk to Tony).

It's a testament to how well Tony knows Loki when he asks his name after he gets no response. His voice is so husky it's almost sweet, and it has Loki recalling other times he's been on the phone or woken up in bed with the man and he sounded like this, all rough and quiet and human in a way Loki didn't realize was so beautiful until Sunday.

Things have the potential to be normal when Tony has cotton in his throat. That's something to think about.

"Hey, Tony," Loki manages with a wet, ugly-sounding sniff, bringing a hand up to dig the sand and gunk out of his eyes with one scarlet fingernail.

Tony makes this noise that Loki identifies as a sigh after a few seconds of inductive reasoning, says, "Good morning, sunshine," with what Loki can only dream is a smile. That gets the water works going again.

(Fun Fact: Once upon a time, Tony wasn't aware of the fact that Loki was basically a human thundercloud. During this era of little knowledge and awkwardness, he took to calling the man by the ironic and unfitting nickname of ' _sunshine_ '. You can just about imagine how a reminder like that would hit Loki in exactly the right place.)

"It's almost one," Loki points out, pressing the heel of his palm against his eyes.

"Are you still crying?" Tony abruptly asks rather than replying to or acknowledging Loki's moment of genius. There's a soft rustling over the line then, and really, is it pathetic and/or weird and/or ridiculous and/or particular that Loki's cataloguing these sounds and these details like they're medicine and he's dying?

"Yeah," Loki says, quiet and meek like he hasn't been since he was in high school. When Tony groans, a complaint clearly in the imminent future, he adds in a somewhat more assertive tone, "You know how I am."

" _I know_ ," Tony sighs, long and deep and just the kind of helpless that Loki hates because he's tired of hearing it everywhere, hearing it in Tony and hearing it in himself and hearing it in everything he once thought was sweet and light and beautiful. Tony takes a lengthy, thoughtful pause before asking, suddenly and without any pretense, "How's your hangover?"

And Loki is sixty percent sure that Tony's rapid switch from topic to topic gets under his skin in a less than pleasant way, but he chooses to not pay attention to his customary irritation and instead dwells on how much he misses Tony's presence and his scent and his touch and his  _everything_  like Penelope did Odysseus, and as he revels in the horrible-amazing feeling of being in take-your-breath-away love, he wonders why positivity is so easy to come by where Tony's concerned and how he hasn't realized how deep his devotion for this man has been running until now. Both questions are easy to answer when you consider the fact that  _one_  – Tony is the sole person that makes Loki unconditionally happy, and even when he doesn't, Loki's not fucking _terrified_  of being less than content around him (as opposed to other people, who generally make Loki feel like he has to safeguard his emotions twenty-four-seven), and  _two_  – fear has been the main culprit behind every crime Loki's committed since he was old enough to feel such a thing.

"Perfectly awful," is what he says in reply to Tony's inquiry. Fenrir paws his way into his lap like a too-large child in pursuit of a parent's attention, then, and Loki doubles over and wraps his torso around the husky in an attempt to appease him.

"I'm sorry, babe," Tony half-whines, bringing a tiny, gratified smile to Loki's face.  _Of course_ , he  _has_  to fuck that up by insisting that, "That's my fault," and even though he  _is_ slightly correct in his assessment of this whole hangover situation, Loki's  _not_  going to be content with letting him feel guilty for something so  _stupid_.

"Hush, you," Loki sighs, peering through the grove of fur he has his face buried in. "You wanted us to get drunk for your birthday, so we did. Don't beat yourself up for that." He's speaking in this mildly irritated that he only ever uses on Tony, and the reason  _why_  he only ever uses it on Tony is because Tony's the only person who's proven himself to be worthy of such respect, the only person who can somewhat tame Loki's quick temper as easily as he can provoke it.

"But you're in pain," Tony argues. He's being childish – a good sign (and by  _good sign_ , I mean  _indicator of normalcy_ ).

"I'll get over it," Loki half-murmurs into his mouthpiece. He listens to Fenrir's stomach gurgle and lets the sound of it soothe him the slightest bit, shifts his cellphone against his ear and says, "I'm in college. I'm  _supposed_  to drink."

"That doesn't mean I can't feel bad about causing you pain," Tony grumbles, and Loki is abruptly aware of the rather infuriating fact that Tony is in one of  _those_  moods, those moods where he's even more self-deprecating and juvenile than he normally is, those moods that tend to lead to reckless, circular behavior and melodrama of the very highest degree, and Loki thinks that the events of last night most likely led Tony to behave the way he is right now, and he's suddenly posed with the question of how to get the man to see things realistically, and  _Jesus Christ_ , they're both so narcissistic that it's fucking  _extraordinary_  that they're capable of acknowledging each other.

"You think that last night was your fault, don't you?" Loki asks, his voice cool and even enough to belie just how frustrated he feels, just how much of a hypocrite he's being.

Tony doesn't hesitate to call him out on the latter, though, and he sounds incredibly affronted when he retorts, rude and so  _him_  it's hard (but not  _too_  hard, considering that the two of them have been just friends a lot longer than they've been Romeo and Juliet) for Loki to get exceptionally angry, "And you don't think the same of yourself?"

At first, Loki is so blindsided by Tony's question that he doesn't even know what to say or how to respond, so he just  _sits_  there, his cheek pressed into Fenrir's fur and his brow all furrowed and his body bent in half and his mouth hanging open, until a suitable, sensible answer finally comes to him. "Of  _course_  I do, To–"

"Loki, it was  _my_  fault," Tony cuts him off before he can even get into the thick of his argument, and Loki has to forcibly press his lips together to keep himself from interrupting Tony in return. _Believe_ me, it's not at all unusual for the two of them to be bickering after only a minute or two on the phone, and seeing that the both of them have highly argumentative, self-important personalities, interjections are a pretty fucking common occurrence during their quarrels.

"You didn't even want to drink last night, and  _I_  made you," Tony continues, no longer the quiet, raspy creature he was before. " _I_ took you back to your place instead of mine.  _I_  talked back to Thor. It was  _my_  fault."

That's the moment when Loki  _has_  to cut in. Tony's mention of Thor is sending red flags flying and alarms blaring in his head, and suddenly, he's that oh-so familiar game of Operation again, screaming because he's been touched in the wrong spot.

"Tony,  _no_ ," he snaps, raising his head off of Fenrir's body and sitting up straight to glare at the space before him, which happens to be occupied by an insignificant multitude of books insignificantly sitting on an insignificant shelf. "You didn't know Thor and the Jackass Four were going to be in my house and fucking everything up, and it was  _your_  birthday –  _not_  mine. It shouldn't have mattered what I wanted."

"But it  _did_ , Loki!" Tony cries, and maybe it's a little crazy and maybe it's a little particular and maybe it's a little self-centered, but Loki absolutely  _cannot_  handle  _anyone_  raising their voice at him, not even Tony.

"Will you listen to me?" Loki finds himself borderline yelling, raising a frustrated, anxious hand to rake his fingers through his sleep-tousled hair.

"Will  _you_  listen to  _me_ _?_ " Tony counters, just as pissed off and self-righteous and persistent as Loki is. "Your feelings  _do_  matter, and I  _know_  I upset you last night, I  _know_ I did."

"What are you talking about?" Loki asks, shrill and desperate and just fucking  _breathless_ , and as soon as the words leave his mouth, he's remembering exactly how angry he was at Tony when the man was yelling at his brother –  _his_  brother – like he wasn't even in the room. Oops.

Tony proves his memory to be infinitely sharper than Loki's, though, because he's practically writing a novel when he answers his question.

"First of all, I lost you when we were at the club," he says, and before Loki can inquire as to what he means by that, he's elaborating, "I don't know  _what_  I said to hurt you, but you didn't open back up to me until we were on the dance floor again."

Loki pauses, analyzes his recollection of last night for a second, and asks, " _Roxanne?_ "

" _Yes_ , Roxanne," Tony confirms. "You did that thing where you go all silent and thoughtful, and I know for a fact that something's wrong when you start thinking like that and when you're not laughing at me and when you can't even  _look_  at me straight."

"Tony–"

"Second of all, even though you only got around to fussing at Thor, I know you were mad at me, too," Tony goes on. "I shouldn't have done what I did. I shouldn't have forgotten you. I'm not your spokesperson."

"Tony,  _please_ ," Loki whines, but Tony's being affected and duplicitous and refusing to let him finish his sentences or even  _begin_  to make a point, and  _damn_ , isn't this why he's loathing himself in the first fucking place? (You'd think that people would strive to  _shed_  their bad habits, but it's just  _so_   _much_   _ **easier**_  to simply hate them and not do anything about them, you know?)

"And I didn't forget when you mentioned Steve," Tony continues, instantly succeeding at throwing Loki into another Hasbro-esque rage.

"So I  _did_  mention Steve," Loki retorts, catching the way Fenrir flinches at his sharpened tone in his peripheral vision. "What are you trying to say by that?"

"You're jealous of him," Tony replies, and his answer so lame, so  _maddening_ , that Loki's on the verge of yelling again when he responds to that load of very true, very enraging bullshit.

"I almost took you to  _bed_  last night!" he cries. The hand in his hair curls into a tight, unyielding fist as he exclaims, as if it should be completely obvious (and it sort of is), "No _shit_ , I'm jealous of him!"

"But  _why_ , Loki?" Tony demands, mirroring Loki's heat almost perfectly as he growls his words out like a werewolf near the full moon. "Is it because Thor's back in your life and things have been harder for you lately and you're a hot commodity now and you were drunk and it was my birthday? Is  _that_  why?"

Ouch.

Loki knows he shouldn't be so hurt by that question. He  _knows_  he shouldn't. He knows he deserved a slap in the face of that nature for being so capricious for so long. That knowledge doesn't stop his breath from disappearing from his lungs and his blood from rushing to his cheeks and his throat from constricting and his mouth from going desert-dry, though, and he's close to tears for the  _eighteen billionth_  time this  _hour_  as he chokes out, "I meant what I said."

"So did I," Tony retorts, seemingly undeterred by Loki's audible distress. Loki listens to him pant against the mouthpiece for a few seconds before he adds, "Do you still want to get tangled up with a person like me?"

Loki lays his head back down on Fenrir's body, wiping at the moisture welling up in his eyes and wincing at the pain shooting up his brain stem and examining the smudge of eyeliner on the cuff of his sleeve (goddamn, he must have looked  _awful_  last night) as he murmurs, soft and broken and so  _pleading_  it's pitiful, "I don't want to have this conversation on the phone."

Tony's not going to have that, though.

"Loki,  _tell_ me," he orders. "Do you  _still_  want to get tangled up with a person like me?"

" _I don't want to have this conversation on the phone!_ " Loki repeats, his voice a strangled cry and his breath catching horribly in his throat. Fenrir starts at the volume of his words, ears turned back and blue eyes wide, and the husky squirms restlessly in Loki's grip until he sits up again, alleviating the pressure he has on his thick, furry body.

"I'm not hanging up until you answer me," Tony says. There's no room for argument once that statement is out in the air.

To tell you the truth, this is a peculiar thing that's happening right here, this fight that they're having, and the source of its peculiarity – the source of  _it_  itself – is Tony's refusal to let Loki lie even though he's so good at doing just that, is the difference between what's right and what's easy, is their near-identical tendencies to think so lowly of themselves, is their quickness to point out their own flaws in others, is their self-destructive desperation for one another, and  _this_  – this is what has been scaring the living  _fuck_  out Loki, this abstract possibility that they could get in a fight so  _dreadful_  (and worse, over  _each other_ ) that they won't even want to fight anymore –

But that's the irony of this whole situation. They're  _fighting_ , and that means they care. They're probably not going to agree about a damn thing but their love for one another, but at least they care enough to disagree in the first place. At  _least_  they  _care_.

"I do," Loki says once he can breathe properly again.

A beat, then Tony pushes, "You do?" He's not being as harsh as he was before, but his insistent tone effortlessly grates on Loki's already fragile nerves.

"I  _do!_ " Loki reiterates, tired of repeating himself.

Tony doesn't say anything for several lengthy moments, just breathes into the phone and listens to Loki sniffle and scrub the tip of his nose red. Then he sighs, "I'm sorry," and it sounds like the best worst thing Loki's ever heard.

"Shut up," Loki replies, resting a hand atop the flat of Fenrir's skull and gently scratching through the fur there. Tony laughs a quiet, defeated little laugh, and Loki has to battle down his urge to smile as he goes on to say, "Nobody was right last night. We all fucked up. Deal?"

"Deal," Tony says, receptive and cooperative like rarely ever is.

"Are you going to come pick me up now?" Loki asks. "I need to talk to you."

"We're talking," Tony indicates, the  _jackass_. Loki deadpans.

" _Tony_."

"I'll be there in thirty," Tony chuckles pacifyingly, and just as Loki begins to mentally divvy up the remaining time he has to make himself somewhat human again, the man adds as something of an afterthought (but a lot more like a promise), "I love you."

That throws Loki's train of thought so off track that he actually thinks he can hear it crashing somewhere in the corner of his mind. His teeth worry at the inside of his mouth for one anxious, hesitant moment before he realizes that there's no legitimate reason why he should be any kind of apprehensive (not anymore, at least), and he lowers his gaze to the floor as he replies, "I love you, too."

He hopes Tony believes him this time.

As soon as he's off of the phone, Loki's grabbing a clean set of clothes and throwing the dirty ones he shed last night into the pile of laundry that is Fenrir's bed. He forces himself to vomit the meager contents of his stomach into his close friend, the toilet, knowing that if he doesn't get the alcohol and sugar out of him now, he's probably going to have it all over the interior of Tony's truck. Then, he scrubs his skin hard and fast enough to have it flushed and goosebumped in what's probably the quickest shower anyone's ever taken in the universe, brushes his teeth, neglects to do much more than just tousle his hair (because even though seeing the array of curls atop his head makes him want to rip his fucking scalp off, his time is pretty limited and he knows his hairstyle has the potential to put a smile on Tony's face), and slips into an old Journey pullover and a pair of skinny pants. He has about fifteen minutes left to waste on himself after he's taken three Tylenol and yanked himself away from the mirror, so he decides to make the most of that time by eating something (he doesn't want to pass out on Tony, either, and how odd is it that every time he gets drunk, he never puts any food in his stomach?) despite the fact that his mind is torturing him with a mile-long list of things he probably should and/or needs to do, like take Fenrir for a walk and wash clothes and clean the backyard and clean the bathroom and clean his room and clean everything  _ever_ , and  _goddamn_ , this is a predicament that's got him thinking suicidal thoughts and contemplating dropping out of the school that is life, because he's fucking  _exhausted_  of the so-called lessons he's been learning for the past twenty years. Jesus.

When Loki walks into the kitchen with Fenrir on his heels, he doesn't find anyone else there before him. For a second, he entertains the thought of Thor having left the house, but he's quickly reminded of the fact that his brother is a stubborn, selfish being and likely wouldn't just disappear without at least  _trying_  to confront him. So, because it's pretty much the only thing he  _can_  do at the moment, he lets the feeling of dread perched at the back of his tongue slide down his throat and settle in the pit of his stomach, a place it knows extraordinarily well after having returned there time and time again.

He's so good at being afraid of things he should get  _paid_  for it, he swears.

Loki deigns to pour himself a glass of milk, toast four out of the six remaining slices of bread he has, and spread the last of his Nutella on them (oh goodie,  _another_  thing he has to do – go grocery shopping), and while he waits for the toaster to do its thing, he walks Fenrir around the damp, mucky backyard, picks up any waste he finds, sweeps the patio clean, and rinses out Fenrir's food and water bowls. After washing his hands, he sits at the kitchen table with Fenrir and forces his hastily-made meal past his lips, his head resting against the husky sat in the chair beside him.

Loki is finishing off his third slice of toast, texting himself a grocery list, and thinking about how much easier maintaining his house would be if Thor just did the laundry or cleaned a room or two every once in awhile when lo and behold – here comes the golden boy himself, shuffling purposefully into the room only to freeze a step inside the doorway and just  _stare_  at Loki like he's never encountered a creature so terrifying before.

And Loki suddenly feels all of the anger that had been clogging his literary arteries last night triggering yet another rather convenient heart attack, and it's a little difficult for him to think straight because of the wave of rage that washes over his mind and blocks out every sense and every thought that might cross the threshold of it with the exception of the monster of emotion that wants to rip right through him, and he kind of forgets how to breathe for a little while, and no color besides red exists in the world, and  _fuck_ , what's that thing people like to call contentment? And happiness? And mental stability and love for other people?

Loki doesn't say a thing, though, just lets his eyes pass over Thor a moment before picking up his last piece of Nutella toast and biting into it. Fenrir chooses not to react to Thor's arrival, either, and Loki's not sure if that's a comfort or a problem to him (it  _should_  be a comfort, but  _fuck_  if Loki doesn't want his husky to just rip his brother's face off right now).

Thor remains where he is, awkward and petrified, for about twenty more long, silent,  _horrifying_  seconds. When Loki continues to not speak and just chew his food, Thor risks venturing further into the room, walks all the way across the kitchen and opens the fridge to peer inside, every movement careful and direct. Loki watches the man from beneath his eyelashes and tries hard to keep his breathing somewhat even, and he assumes that Thor is displeased by the lack of food he finds in the refrigerator after he sees the face he makes, hears the soft groan he emits.

He's swallowing the very last of his toast when Thor finally speaks up.

"Aren't you gonna say anything?" the man asks, his tone uncharacteristically quiet and cautious. He's still the scared little boy he was the night before, so it seems.

Loki pulls his gaze away from Thor's back, glancing out the window, where he can see that it's starting to drizzle once more, and replying, "I said everything I wanted to last night." It's a half-lie, but it's for both his  _and_  Thor's sake (not that he'd ever truly own up to his attempt to save his brother from how very monstrous he can be).

Thor pauses, then says, "Well, I want to talk."

The first thing that springs up in Loki's psyche in response to Thor's statement that actually registers to him is shock, because Thor  _never_  ' _wants to talk_ ',  _ **ever**_. Thor confronts problems like a soldier – not a politician, and he fixes things with his loudness and his fists instead of with his words. There's frankly no such thing as ' _talking_ ' with Thor; rather, there's either being strong enough to match his punches or vociferous enough to out-scream him. Only the latter of these things is something Loki's capable of achieving, and even so, his ability to talk loudly really starts to wane after he's cried his throat into constriction and been reduced to a blubbering mess of a person.

Bewilderment is quickly overtaken by indignation, however, and Loki is quick to express that when he snaps, "Does it look like I give a damn?"

Thor turns to him, then, not exactly whiplash-fast but not slow enough for him to be perplexed or stunned or anything less than moderately irritated. Loki meets his gaze with unconcealed fury, setting his lips into a dark, nasty scowl.

"See, that's it right there," Thor sighs, his icy eyes growing stormy and distressed like they always do after he's been insulted.

Loki practically punctuates Thor's comment with, "What's  _it_?"

"It's like I can't do anything right by you," Thor replies just as rapidly. He shuts the fridge without looking at it or taking anything from it, and for some reason, that just pisses Loki off even _more_.

"You can't!" Loki yells, chest rising with the deep, angry breath he sucks in through his nose, his nostrils flaring, eyes burning, cheeks tightening, lips puckering. They're only thirty seconds into this 'talk' and he's  _already_  screaming.

Thor isn't hesitant to bark back at him, though (which isn't very surprising, for it doesn't take much to unnerve or rile the man up), and he's definitely catching up with Loki's volume when he cries, "You could at least tell me how to try to!"

(FYI: Speaking from a purely objective standpoint, Thor is false in this particular accusation. Loki has told him many,  _many_  times that he needs to clean up after himself and respect him and his house and let him have his space and allow him to make his own decisions before. However, it's not inaccurate of him to assume that nothing he does will ever satisfy Loki, because, well, that's kind of how it's always been between the two of them.)

"I shouldn't have to!" Loki retorts, rising out of his seat more to visibly balance out this picture of anger he and Thor are painting than to intimidate the man before him, because he knows that's a game he just won't win by the time Thor is seriously exasperated. As Fenrir jumps off of his chair and circles around to stand behind him, Loki glares at Thor like he's trying to knock him down with his eyes and his eyes alone and adds, "I'm your  _brother_!"

" _Yeah_ , Loki! I know that! I'm not stupid!" Thor exclaims, and he sounds like he's legitimately upset and puzzled when he asks, "Why is it such a problem that I want to protect you, then?"

"I don't  _need_  you to protect me anymore!" Loki shrieks, kicking his chair to the side and stalking towards Thor, who backs up at his approach in what looks like disgust but is probably just fear. Loki doesn't think he's going to strike Thor until his hand is halfway-raised to do so, and it takes the willpower of the  _gods_  for him to just ball his fingers into a pretty little fist and let gravity pull them downwards like the decent, civil person he tries to guilt himself into being would.

After several short, tense moments of just watching Loki like one would watch a feral animal on the verge of mauling something (which is basically what Loki is fifty percent of the time, really), Thor starts to say, "You're my little brother–", and it's like he  _knows_  he's gone in the wrong direction after those four words have escaped him, because the expression plastered across his face is nearly  _expectant_  when Loki cuts him off.

"I'm not a  _child_ , Thor!" Loki interjects, almost shivering with fury as he takes another step forward, one Thor doesn't back away from. "I don't need to be coddled and defended and babied by you all the time. I can take care of myself  _without_  your help."

"Loki, I'm not just going to stop looking out for you because you're so damn independent all of a sudden!" Thor asserts, forceful and slightly more like himself than he was before (and by  _like himself_ , I mean growling and angry and not all vulnerable and pained). He looks like he's ready to grab Loki by the shoulders and start shaking him or punch him in the face or shove him to the floor when he says, "I did that once and look what happened to you."

It only takes a second for Loki to realize that Thor's talking about the accident and the disease it thrust upon him, a second more to think of everything else the man could be implying, like the whole of the past two years or so – twenty-six months Thor spent with Steve Rogers and Clint Barton and everybody beautiful and awful in the world (or just in the city of Sidney, Montana), twenty-six months Thor wasn't there for him for more than a few minutes or for anything besides a verbal lashing of anybody that looked at him the wrong way or a half-assed plea of innocence, twenty-six months Loki spent replacing everybody that had once been in his life with Tony,  _Tony_ , who took Thor's job of shielding him from the world, Freya's job of being the person closest to his heart, Freyr's job of lighting a fire of passion and sin inside him, Odin's job of reminding him just how very insignificant he really was, Frigga's job of reminding him that he was worth the moon and the stars, every lost creature he'd ever found's job of being something to love and care for like he would himself if himself wasn't a thing he hated so much. For  _twenty-six months_ , Thor and Loki existed in two completely different worlds that sometimes overlapped but always remained separate, and Loki thinks that Thor's insinuating that those twenty-six months did him something awful, and that really just breaks his heart and fills him with the oddest kind of rage, because the only reason  _why_  those twenty-six months harmed him in any way was because Thor decided to end them by showing up on his doorstep and asking for a home, and Loki is pretty damn certain that he could have gone the rest of his life healing and rebuilding himself with things Tony would put inside him to replace all the bullshit and the junk Thor and Freyr and Freya and Balder and Odin and Steve and  _every-_ _ **fucking**_ _-body_  shoved down his throat, and the fact that Thor messed that up by injecting himself back into his life in such a drastic way and making him feel things he hasn't felt in  _years_  and forcing him to evolve out of the mold he was just starting to become comfortable in is just fucking  _agonizing_  for Loki to digest, because it  _sucks_ , having to change. It  _sucks_ , paying attention to a past so dreadful. It  _ **sucks**_ , caring about a person who cares for you just as much but in an entirely  _wrong_  way. It really,  _really_ sucks.

Loki blinks, unsure whether to feel offended or gratified by Thor's comment. He fixes Thor with a look that conveys everything from hurt to confusion to passivity, asks, "You really think I'm so terrible?"

"It's not  _you_ ," Thor practically whines, reaching out for Loki only to let his hands fall away from the man when he flinches in the opposite direction. He frowns a deep, from-the-heart sort of frown, his brows knitting together at the center of his forehead, and he's almost like a lost puppy in his helplessness and his demeanor, in the way he watches Loki with eyes so bottomless and remorseful they're nearly impossible to behold. After a moment of silence, during which Loki attempts to formulate a response that manages to be pissy and justified and apologetic and rational all at once, Thor adds, "It's what I did to you."

And that has to be the biggest admission of guilt that's ever come out of the man. Loki's gone his whole life never hearing Thor own up to anything he's done in such a sincere way – not  _once_  – and now that they're standing in  _his_  kitchen, two adults with very individual wants and needs and so close to yet so far from having an intelligent conversation and Thor just  _baring his soul_  so openly, Loki feels the gears in his head grind to a halt for the first time in what seems like forever. Suddenly, he's not that angry anymore – he's just heartbroken. Just indecisive and overwhelmed and perplexed and  _heartbroken_.

"I'm sorry," Thor mumbles when Loki doesn't say anything, bowing his head a bit and glancing at the floor. The sight of that alone stuns Loki into speech.

"Why can't you realize that I've grown up?" is what ends up coming out of his mouth, and his voice is ironically quiet and high-pitched when he asks the question. Thor raises his gaze to meet the other's again, an action that seems to embolden Loki the slightest bit, have him inquire, "Why can't you realize that I  _need_  to make my own choices? Why can't you realize that I'm more than just your little brother?" He swallows thickly, looks straight into Thor's clear blue eyes. "I'm not  _you_ , you know."

That's when Thor says something Loki's going to hear in his head almost every night for the next year and a half. He doesn't say it with much force or vigor, but that's what makes it all the more meaningful, because Loki knows Thor like the back of his hand even if he doesn't always understand him, and he knows that Thor's being the most honest he can be when he's saying – just  _saying_ , not yelling or growling or laughing or mumbling – "I just want to be your brother again. Your  _real_  brother. Like I used to be."

Sometimes, the Earth will just cease to turn and time will grind to a halt because of the extraordinary and rare ability human beings have to put a stop to everything normal and customary with words they probably haven't thought out too extensively. This is one of those times.

First of all, Loki doesn't have a clue  _why_  Thor thought it would be acceptable or  _safe_  to tell him something so deep, something Loki's completely capable of and not at all beyond ripping him apart for, not so much for the sake of sense or ' _I'm bettering your understanding of the world_ ', but simply because of the fact that Loki is a shitty brother and he's bitten Thor's tongue off more times than he can count on a  _hundred_  hands. ( _Really_?  _Why_  would Thor give him such an opportunity? Does love actually make you  _that_  stupid?)

All Loki does know is that Thor is wounded over this, he has been for awhile, and it's probably his and  _only_  his fault that the man hasn't brought this up to him for so long. He isn't even upset with the man for keeping his feelings hidden. He's just ashamed of himself.

Secondly, it occurs to Loki then that he wants the same thing as Thor, this whole  _being brothers_  thing – no questions asked, no strings attached. I mean, he's pretty much always known that he wants Thor to treat him like he would have had the accident and their adolescences never happened, even  _if_  such a desire is extremely unrealistic and just plain fucking impractical, but there's always something else inside him contradicting that. Either he hates Thor for tearing him away from Tony and refusing to clean his room and having friends other than him, or he hates himself for being alive and acting selfishly and having feelings, or he hates  _everything_  for spiting him in some way, shape, or form – he's  _never_  able to want Thor to be his brother without some other complication impeding on that wish, and of course, there's all kind of consequences associated with letting Thor in again, like the aforementioned requirement that he change and a loss of personal security and constant reminders of the past and the simple fact that trusting people is a difficult task to carry out when you've got so many scars on your back that sometimes it's difficult to remember everybody who put one there. But you know what?

Loki promised himself a long time ago that he would accomplish at least one great thing in his life, and if he has the chance to overcome the mountain of problems between he and Thor, he's going to take it, and if he can prove himself wrong at something, he's going to do it, and if he's tired of fighting Thor as well as he is of fighting himself, he's going to rest.

Loki's hit with a deep, philosophical thought, then, the kind that usually only comes to him when he's lying around with Tony and they're trying to figure out the workings of the universe.  _Things will always be imperfect_ , he thinks, and that notion fills him up with such exquisite joy and such twisted sorrow that he has to bring a hand up to wipe at his eyes, which are now brimming with involuntary tears (and dear _Lord_ , is he sick of tears).

"You are," he replies to Thor's statement, nodding ever so slightly as if to reassure himself of the faint, flimsy truth in his words. "But you're also just  _you_ , and I'm also just  _me_."

Thor stares at Loki and doesn't say anything for awhile, every aspect of him smaller, from the way he holds his shoulders to the very essence of his being, usually so radiant and all-encompassing and now just a dying flame of an aura. When he finally does speak, he's repeating the same helpless apology he maundered out earlier – "I'm sorry."

That's when Loki covers his face with his left hand and just lets his tears fall into the curve of his palm. As soon as the first shaky breath – not quite a sob but somehow more poignant – passes between his lips, Thor's right there, and Loki's actually letting him  _hug_  him, and he's bringing his free arm up to wrap around Thor's shoulders, and he's leaning his head into his brother's, and Thor is squeezing his aching body like he might not ever have the opportunity to again – a valid fear considering the cycle their relationship tends to undergo.

"I really am sorry, Loki. I just don't ever know what to do with you anymore," Thor mumbles, his voice cracking the tiniest bit. He doesn't shift or loosen his grip on his small, lithe brother, just holds him where he is and lets him drop his forehead to his shoulder, where he can dampen his t-shirt and not worry about how the weight of his skull sometimes gets to be too much to handle.

"I'm sorry, too," Loki replies in a tone just as hushed and twice as broken. "You shouldn't have to put up with me."

Thor scoffs quietly. "Don't be stupid," he says, drawing a brief laugh out of Loki simply because of the fact that  _he'd_  usually be the one telling such a thing to Thor. Thor pauses at Loki's chuckle before going on to say, "I practically killed you. You screaming at me is the least I deserve."

Honestly, Thor has  _never_  been so self-deprecating in the entirety of his twenty-two year lifespan – at least, not verbally, he hasn't. Listening to him speak like this, like  _Loki_ , is one of the worst things Loki's ever had to endure, and he's suddenly determined to make sure that Thor never has a reason to think of himself like that again, even if it means he has to let go of his already feeble pride.

"You didn't mean to," Loki murmurs, letting himself admit as well as believe the fact that Thor really  _didn't_  intend to get them into that accident for the very first time (because even though getting drunk off your ass to pick your little brother up isn't exactly conducive to, let's see,  _not killing people_ , it's not like Thor purposefully crashed into that poor old guy only two intersections away from home, and Loki  _was_  yelling at him like he had no idea that a person as drunk and as confrontational as Thor would react less than violently to his harpy-esque criticism). Sniffing softly, he raises his head so that he can look directly at Thor. "And I forgive you."

He's not really sure how much of that was honesty and how much of that was just the heat of the moment, but he's already told himself that he's going to make that statement a true one someday, so he neglects to think too hard on the nature of what he just blurted out.

Thor's eyes light up like a child's would, like two stars in the belt of Orion or a couple of cerulean fireflies, and he's coming back to himself, now, turning into that sunny, luminous person he almost always is. His tone is booming and resonant – just like Thor himself – when he laughs, "Thank you," and crushes Loki in a breathtaking, soul-shaking, heartbreaking sort of embrace, one he drags out for several long, oxygen-deprived seconds.

Loki is just croaking out a strangled, chuckling, "You're welcome," when a sharp rapping noise comes from somewhere outside of the universe he and Thor are existing in, and suddenly, his mind is in a totally different place than it was before, because there could only be one person knocking on the door right now, and that person is Tony.

Thor releases Loki a bit slowly, his features a mask of mild confusion when Loki gets a chance to look at them, and once the man grasped the abruptly urgent and anxious state his demeanor has fallen into, his brows furrow just a little and he asks in a tone so ambiguous it's almost infuriating, "It's him, isn't it?"

Loki immediately grasps the meaning of Thor's purposefully dubious question. He nods tersely, carefully searching his brother's face for anything worse than passive acceptance as he sniffles, scrubs his eyes dry, and replies, "Yeah."

Thor gives Loki an impulsive, disappointed little frown before (failingly) attempting to school his expression into something that can just barely pass for indifference. He silently opens his mouth for one lengthy moment, like he's about to say something long-winded and justified and important and entitled, then just sighs, "Oh," all lame and unsurprised and so obviously dissatisfied with this particular occurrence.

For a second, Loki's exceptionally torn between completely disregarding Thor's semi-disapproving reaction to go answer the door and being a good person – a good  _brother_  – and trying to, I don't know,  _comfort_  the man before him… or something to that effect. It's a bit difficult for him to even consider doing the first thing after the weird heart-to-heart he was just knee-deep in, but the very thought of Tony has his judgment cloudy and his blood getting NASCAR-esque, and he doesn't want to be rude, and making decisions is hard to do when you're a twenty year-old white boy with a mood disorder and trust issues like nobody's business, and  _shit_ , he can't even  _think straight_ with all these emotions running rampant inside him.

Thor basically makes his choice for him when he says, "You should probably get that." It's not the most encouraging comment to make, but it lets Loki know that Thor isn't going to throw a temper tantrum if he leaves with Tony, which tells him that the conversation they just had actually  _did_  mean something (if only for a moment), which tells him that it's okay for him to raise his chin a little, which tells him that he's capable of having positive thoughts every once in awhile, which tells him that he really  _doesn't_ have it as bad as he thinks he does, which tells him that he's a pretentious ass that needs to get a serious fucking grip on himself, thus landing his mood in a somewhat unpleasant hole for the twenty millionth time today. Life is good, isn't it?

"You're going to be okay?" Loki asks just as another barrage of knocks comes from the living room, letting his hands linger on Thor's shoulders a bit longer than necessary. A question as compassionate as the one he just ejected feels weird coming out of his mouth when he's addressing anyone other than Tony or Frigga, and he tries to push down the feeling of discomfort that wads up in his throat once he realizes how odd it is for him to be openly concerned for his brother.

"Yeah, of course," Thor replies, giving Loki a couple of affirmative nods and a smirk that only looks a little forced. Loki's ready to give the man another hug, one less desperate and tragic and more amiable and warm than the one before, when Thor adds, like it's fucking  _customary_ that things should be awkward and bumpy to some extent, "Just be careful."

 _Wow_.

Only allowing himself an ounce of forethought, Loki smacks Thor's bicep with a tiny scowl, narrows his eyes at the man when he lets out a boisterous, thundering laugh in response. "Don't be a jackass," he huffs.

"Sorry," Thor chuckles, and he's so amused and lighthearted and  _relieved_  now that Loki can't really get angry with him again (unfortunately).

Absolutely despite and beside himself, Loki curls his mouth into this rare, impossibly pleased smile, brings his hands up to sandwich Thor's face between them, leans their foreheads together in an uncharacteristic expression of affection, and just  _laughs_ , freely and without much abandon. Thor grumbles at and resists the gesture at first, but after Loki mumbles out a low little, "Don't be a baby, you  _baby_ ," the man lets himself echo Loki's soft chuckling and relaxes a little. And Loki holds them there like that for a few seconds, amusing himself with the way Thor looks like a cyclops so up close, then says, "Don't destroy anything."

As the smaller, darker of them pulls away and moves in the direction of the living room, grabbing his cellphone from where he left it on the table as he goes, Thor grins and, with a mock-salute of guaranteed fidelity, crows, "Aye-aye, captain!" There are no words to describe the feeling that fills Loki at those words, golden and heart-stopping and so close to perfection it's painful, because oh  _God_  – Thor called him  _captain_.  _ **Captain**_. Like-he's-actually-in-charge-of-things  _captain_. Like-he-has-a-degree-of-worth  _captain_.  _ **Captain**_.

However amazing Thor's comment makes him feel, though, bravado is a thing that ceases to exist in Loki's world once he's walking into the living room with Fenrir following close after him, and even though he knows he shouldn't be afraid of seeing Tony, even though he knows he  _needs_  to see Tony, he can't really stifle the apprehension that crops up inside him when he's approaching the front door like he's about to pass through a portal into an unknown alternate dimension full of things designed to scare the hell out of him. He feels self-conscious in a way he never should around Tony, not since that night in October of the previous year when they got awfully drunk and spent hours singing to one another with Loki's YouTube history and Tony's media library as their guides, wearing clothes homely and comfortable enough to consider each other the true high school definition of what best friends are; not since the morning after that when Loki awoke curled up in Tony's bed, cocooned in two comforters exactly how he  _loves_  to fall asleep with Tony wrapped around him outside of his protective cotton shield, his body bared to the cold despite the fact that he was rich enough to have Osiris craft him a blanket of Egyptian cotton and fucking  _hand deliver_ it to him if he wanted it to, his head tucked beneath Loki's chin, and his existence a heaven-sent gift Loki would often wonder how he'd come to deserve.

And then the door is open and  _oh_ , there Tony is, slightly raccoon-eyed and fuzzy-headed and just a little disheveled, not in a fashion that's intentional but in a fashion that's rushed and eager, and Loki  _knows_  that Tony hurried out of his house as fast as he could even though he's about five minutes late,  _knows_  Tony took a shower just as quick as  _he_  did and  _knows_  he dealt with his hair just as much (just as  _little_ ) as  _he_  did, because it's damp and messy atop his head and Tony usually cares about his appearance more than such disorder reflects, and Loki can smell rain and soap and Axe on the man, and he's smelled that sweet, clean mixture of a scent countless times before when he's laid down with Tony in bed or on a sofa somewhere, smelled that scent mingled with motor oil and acrylic paint and sweat and tobacco, and that reminder warms him to the bone, but he has to speak now and he doesn't really know what to say, so can I get a little help from the audience, please?

Eventually, Tony realizes that Loki's being weird like he sometimes is when national disasters like last night happen, so he quirks his lips into a crooked, impish smirk and quips, "I really look _that_ bad?"

Loki's face contorts into a display of what's supposed to be a hybrid between sheepish embarrassment and exasperated endearment as he replies, "You're fine."

"' _Fine_ ' as in ' _average_ ' or ' _fine_ ' as in  _'hey there, sexy_ '?" Tony counters, grinning when Loki rewards him with one of those involuntary laughs that will occasionally come out of him without his permission. A second later and he's halfway in the doorway, grabbing Loki's wrist and pulling him from where he halfway-hides behind the door, and for a moment, they're  _normal_  – just a couple of silly young men who happen to laugh a whole fucking lot around each other. But then they both realize at the exact same time how very close they're standing together, and Loki's uncomfortable and Tony just looks  _confused_ , and they're back to square one – awkward, silent,  _stupid_  square one.

That is, until Tony closes the short distance between them to kiss Loki right on the lips. It's a pretty normal kiss – not particularly cautious, but not passionate or lustful or anything. It doesn't last long enough to be considered dramatic, nor is it exceptionally short and fleeting and unsatisfying. It's just pleasantly tender, the right amount of affectionate and soothing and  _okay_ , and Loki raises a hand to brush his fingers along Tony's jaw as if to express his approval of the gesture (or a desire to stay connected by the mouth forever – same difference).

Tony lets out a soft, gusty sigh at Loki's touch, forcing their lips to part so that he can give the other a rather open once over. He still has Loki's wrist in his grasp, and he rubs his thumb over the inside of it like he's drawing runes on his skin as he takes in the quietly acceptant, wordlessly longing quality of Loki's disposition. And the whole universe is a question mark in that instant, and here they are, trying to figure out what to call each other or if that kiss was appropriate or if their lives really are as theatrical as they make them out to be, and Loki senses that they're having one of  _those_  moments, those moments where their thoughts synchronize without them being terribly aware of it, and he likes that. That's a comforting thing to think about.

Then Tony asks, "You want to try that again, or…?", and Loki's seriously hoping he doesn't seem as desperate as he really is when his fingers turn imperative on Tony's jowl and he slips his wrist out of the man's grip so that he can hook his arm around his neck and tug him closer. Tony makes this nearly inaudible, chuckling sort of noise before he's pressing his mouth to Loki's once more, letting his hands rest against the man's hips like they belong there, like this is something they do everyday – just greet each other with soft, lazy kisses that sow seeds of fire in the pits of their stomachs.

Because the world is a large place that just happens to hate them and time is a thing that goes on, Fenrir starts to brush his body along the back of Loki's legs and Thor emerges from the kitchen with an incredibly healthy breakfast/lunch ( _Lord knows_  how long the man's been up) of beef jerky and Red Bull just as Tony turns the kiss the slightest bit sensual by focusing on Loki's bottom lip and sucking at it so gently he needs to be  _shot_  or something, and Loki's aware that even though Thor kind of-sort of agreed to give him his space where Tony's concerned, there's nothing in the fine print that says he's obligated to like Tony or enjoy watching the two of them make out (plus, Loki has firsthand knowledge of how uncomfortable it is to see your sibling share saliva with someone you aren't too fond of – does the name ' _Sif_ ' ring any bells?). So, due to the fact that he  _is_  a conscientious person (I know how hard that is to believe), he pulls his mouth away from Tony's and nuzzles at the man's nose, says, "Maybe we should get out of here."

Tony gives Loki one of the many variations of his puppy-dog look, this one conveying something like mild confusion or unabashed affection or both, and when Loki takes a step back (and nearly falls on top of Fenrir, thank you very much), his eyes trail from him to whatever's going on behind him, which is most likely Thor bitch-facing the hell out of him or being grumpy or whatever it is he does when he's angry and sworn to silence. Tony's expression sobers a little as he returns his gaze to Loki and replies, "Yeah, good idea," taking Loki's hand from his shoulder so that he can press a tiny kiss to his knuckles (that's one quiet cough out of Thor, courtesy of Mr. Stark) and tugging him in the direction of the outside, where it's still drizzling and gray in a way that Loki loves most of the time.

Initially, Loki pulls out of Tony's grip so that he can turn around and kneel beside Fenrir, who seems to instinctively know that he's about to leave for an indefinite amount of time if the flatness of his ears and the roundness of his eyes are any indication. He takes a moment to smooth the husky's fur down around his face and neck, to rub their noses together and kiss the dip between his eyes, and for a second, his heart physically aches at the realization that he's been abandoning Fenrir quite a bit lately, that he's probably making matters worse by leaving him right now.

As if he's somehow heard Loki's thoughts, Thor blurts, "I'll play with him… and stuff." When Loki raises his eyes to him, his fingers still buried in Fenrir's fur, Thor looks uncomfortable and twitchy and just shy of sheepish when he scratches a hand through his hair and adds, "You're going to be gone all day, right?"

Tony snorts out a suggestive, insolent sort of chuckle from behind Loki at Thor's comment, and Loki allows himself a small smile when he sees Thor stiffen in response to the noise. He replies, "I'm assuming, yeah," and as soon as the words leave him, he can practically  _feel_  Tony smirking at the spot between his shoulders, feel the gallons of smugness radiating off of the man in waves at everything his answer sort of-kind of implies (because it's simply  _impossible_ to keep your mind out of the gutter in today's society).

Thor nods brusquely, gesturing with his Red Bull to Fenrir and fastidiously neglecting to look at Tony. "I'll take care of him," he promises.

Loki's tentative smile grows into something bright and joyful and so incredibly and uncharacteristically sweet in its toothlessness. He lets out a chuckled, rare, "Thank you, Thor," giving Fenrir one last scratch behind the ears and Thor a look that's supposed to mean something special, or  _whatever_ , before he's following Tony out to his truck a little more than anxiously.

"You never stopped crying, did you?" is what Tony asks him the instant he's got the passenger side door closed, and his question does a spectacular job of throwing a wave of panic over Loki, something he must know and/or sense judging by the way he leans over to thread his fingers through the damp hair at the back of Loki's head and press a quick, affectionate kiss to his cheekbone a few seconds after he's voiced the query.

"I did," Loki replies after he's gotten his thoughts to act somewhat orderly, watching Tony key his engine on. "It's just that Thor and I–" He stops abruptly at the sudden loudness of the music blaring from Tony's speakers – Daft Punk, if he's identified this particular artist correctly – and Tony throws him a sheepish glance as he turns the volume down to a hushed, comfortable  _7_. Loki takes another second to gather himself again before he repeats, "It's just that Thor and I had this…  _thing_ after I'd gotten dressed."

"Was that  _thing_  called an argument?" Tony asks as he busies himself with trying to back out of Loki's front yard. Loki has the vague sensation of being in high school again, watching his house slip away from him without his hands on a steering wheel.

"It started off that way," he says, keeping his eyes focused on the houses passing outside his window rather than on Tony. "It just got emotional and…  _sticky_."

" _Sticky_ ," Tony snort-laughs, wrinkling his nose in amusement at the unusual adjective. He pauses for a short stretch before asking, "So you're okay, now?", and the question comes out of him like he knows it has an answer that's less than satisfactory – an assumption that's only slightly accurate.

"I don't know," Loki says, voice quiet and hushed. He brings a hand up and behind his head to play with the hair at the nape of his neck, adds, "I am with Thor, kind of."

Tony makes this soft noise of acknowledgment, then, and Loki listens as the man ejects the CD playing and one-handedly replaces it with something they both have ears for – Coldplay. They're both speechless throughout the first half of  _Politik_ , and it's not the comfortable kind of friendly silence that doesn't deserve or need to be broken they're sharing, but a silence that's deafening, that speaks volumes and crawls up under your skin and leaves you feeling the slightest bit sick, and Loki kind of  _hates_  that he can't find it in himself to speak up, and it's not like he doesn't know what to say or do or anything, because he  _does_  know and he  _wants_  to talk and he  _needs_  to talk, but he feels like doing so would be the equivalent of peeling off the iron skin he's been wearing for so long, skin that's just  _so_  much thinner when he's drunk and Tony's spent hours kissing it off of him, and he's  _this_  – this weakling, this boy that feels too much and keeps every gallon of emotion his heart will pump through his veins inside of himself, so when it all comes out, it comes out  _pouring_ , and then he's gone, and he can't fix a  _goddamn_  thing, and who the fuck is he kidding if he thinks he can, he can't do  _anything_ , he only runs away, and he's all alone in his soul, why should he even  _try_ to be with people, and  _shit_ , he's scared and bitter again, and this is a sentence that started off being about silence and look at it now, talking about a million things all at once just like every second of wordlessness and ' _give me love over, love over, love over this_ ' that passes is –

And then Tony asks, "Are you going to say something or do I have to pull words out of you with inappropriate comments and clever questions?", because sometimes, the only way to break a silence is to point out its presence. Silences are self-conscious that way.

Loki sighs, finally pulling his eyes away from the window only to drop them on Tony's dashboard instead of on his face. "Where do I start?" he sighs, more to himself than anyone else, but knowing that his friend has a habit of answering every rhetorical question he happens to voice, he's expecting a response out of Tony.

"It's  _your_  mind," Tony replies. Loki actually looks at him after he says that, finds him easily returning his stare as they near a yellow light, his dark eyes soft and gently inquisitive.

"You could have made that," he hedges. It takes Tony a moment to realize that Loki's talking about the traffic light in front of them, but when he does, his face splits into the weirdest smile and he  _laughs_ , quiet and melodious and almost unfitting in an odd sort of way.

"I wanted to look at you, and I can't very well do that while I'm driving, now can I?" the man says, turning his torso ever so slightly to the right so that he can face Loki more directly.

"You've done it before," Loki points out. He gets a pinch on the shoulder for that.

" _Talk_ , baby," Tony pushes, and the pet name he's attached to the end of that imperative has Loki close to blushing at the memories it evokes, memories of last night, memories that consist of Tony's tongue in his mouth and Tony's fingers on his spine and Tony's head between his thighs.

Loki sighs something deep and hot in his lungs as his fingers grow rough and jerky in his hair, fear a thing thick and heavy in the center of his chest. He repeats his question from earlier – "Where do I start?"

"How about with what happened after I left?" Tony suggests just as the light turns green.

"Uhm – I just had a breakdown, that's all," Loki half-splutters, his anxiety quickly turning into irritation and rage and shame and depression all at once as he speaks. He's thinking about the look that was plastered on Sif's face when he started yelling at her, thinking about her and Fandral and Thor crowded in the doorway of his room, thinking about the hard, angry plane of Tony's back, and suddenly, the urge to cry doesn't seem so ridiculous and his desire for conversation has decreased quite a bit.

"A breakdown?" Tony asks. He probably knows that Loki's tiptoeing around what actually happened and, like the asshole he is, has taken it upon himself to shove Loki into jumping on this thing with both of his feet.

"I screamed at Thor and his friends, kicked them out of my house, drank some water, and went to bed," Loki borderline snaps, relocating his gaze back to the water trickling down the outside of his window.

"You kicked Thor out?" Tony questions. "He was at your house–"

"No, not  _him_ ," Loki interjects. "Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, and Sif."

"You tore into them, didn't you?" Tony urges, and when Loki scoffs and turns a rather heated gaze on him, he smirks, reaches over to trail his fingers along Loki's jaw and laughs, " _That's_   _ **my**_ Loki."

"Oh,  _stop_ ," Loki barks, slapping Tony's hand away from his face in spite of the line of heat it's left on his skin. "I'm not proud of what I did."

" _I_ am," Tony replies, and for a second, Loki actually flirts with the idea of punching the man dead in the face right in the middle of this intersection they're crossing (and he's never punched _anyone_ ,  _ **ever**_ , besides Thor and Freyr).

"Tony, I already make people uncomfortable enough by simply  _existing_ ," Loki argues. "The fact that I was a  _monster_  last night isn't something I take pride in. I  _do_  happen to have a conscience."

Loki is so funny, you guys.  _Really_. A  _conscience?_ What's  _that_ , and where the hell does Loki think he got one?

"Loki…" Tony starts to say, trailing off into a helpless sort of sigh before running his fingers through his hair, wincing when his digits catch and pull on the tangles there, and asserting, "You said what you had to. They  _needed_  you to yell at them – hell, they were practically  _begging_ for you to with the way they treated you. If you hadn't told them off, they'd have never stopped putting you to bed in tears." Tony pauses to take a breath, casting Loki a sideways glance as he adds, " _Fuck_  their feelings. They've been hurting yours for long enough."

Loki is silent and impassive throughout the entirety of Tony's rant, his eyes blindly focused on the hibiscus shrubs that slide on by outside his rain-spattered window – a sight indicative of the fact that they've entered Tony's neighborhood. He doesn't speak immediately after Tony's ended his argument, but when he does, his voice is insanely quiet and he's being the most honest he's been throughout this whole damn car ride.

He says, "But my feelings don't matter  _at all_ ," and he doesn't think twice about the statement once it's out of him, doesn't even  _consider_  the possibility that he could be wrong.

"Bullshit," is Tony's response. Common sense and life experience tell Loki that he should be angered by the man's comment, but the sudden pit of despair he's fallen into, so similar to the one he woke up in, keeps him from feeling anything other than plain, unglamorous disagreement.

"Listen to me," Tony commands once he realizes that Loki's not going to say anything or dispute his claim. "It doesn't matter what Thor or your asshole cousins or your–" He cuts himself off, then, and when Loki forces himself to look at the man, he finds him staring at the road in front of him with a faintly resentful glint in his eyes. Loki's about to urge Tony to continue speaking when he finally just  _says_  it, when he picks up right where he left off with, "It doesn't matter what your father ever said or did to you. Your feelings  _do_  matter."

"It's not that simple, Tony," Loki huffs, even though he  _knows_  he's told Tony the same thing or some variation of it before, even though he  _knows_  he'd agree with Tony without a second thought if he were talking about  _anyone_  but him.

"Yes it is!" Tony exclaims.

" _No_ , it's not!" Loki retorts. "I seriously doubt my family would have treated me the way they did without a good reason to. They're smart people, you know."

Tony exhales a deep, exasperated breath through his nose, making a rather sharp turn onto a side street as he asks, "And what ' _good reason_ ' do you suppose your family had? The fact that you're different from them?"

"The fact that something's  _wrong_  with me!" Loki chokes out. He can't seem to take his eyes off of Tony now that they're actually getting somewhere, never mind that ' _somewhere_ ' is a less-than-savory place.

" _What_ , Loki?" Tony yells, and suddenly, he's hitting the brakes fast enough for Loki to lurch forward and nearly hit the dashboard (this is dangerous driving for the weather, is it not?). He turns a pair of stormy brown eyes on him, asks, "What's so  _awful_  about you, because either  _you're_  wrong and just delusional or  _I'm_ wrong and a complete fucking  _idiot_  for thinking so highly of you."

These boys  _really_  know how to smack a couple of words together, don't they? (And for the record, the tears welling up in Loki's eyes are ones of fervor – not hurt, not hurt when he's exhausted fourteen years of his life being  _upset_  over something that's just universal fact to him, and Tony's just trying to make a point – not offend, not offend when he knows that he'd do better being honest and blunt than sugarcoat anything he tells Loki, and the two of them argue all the time and it's not the end of the world and they're going to disagree about anything and everything but their love for one another until the day they or their biological clocks happen to stop, and such a day can't be seen on the horizon from where they're standing now.)

"Don't yell at me!" Loki cries, fixing Tony with a look just as incensed and intense as the one he's being given. He watches almost curiously as everything hard in Tony's gaze crumbles into something that looks a lot like sorrow, points at the picture perfect house about three yards away from them (which happens to be Tony's), and orders, "Drive."

Tony just stares at Loki for one long, tense moment before he does as he's told and turns into his driveway, repeats in a voice much softer than yet just as bitter as it was before, "What's so awful about you, Loki? Please… just  _enlighten_  me."

"Listen to the conversation we're having," Loki says. "I'm disagreeing with you even though I know you're right." He raises an index finger. "That's one."

"That just makes you selfless," Tony argues, keying his engine off. Here come those violent thoughts, again, telling Loki to give his best friend a bloody nose or a black eye.

"By literal definition,  _yes!_ " Loki huffs, running a rough hand through his messy curls in his frustration. "By  _my_  definition, that makes me a narcissist and an asshole."

"We're  _all_  narcissistic assholes!" Tony counters, impassioned once more. He's facing Loki, now, one elbow propped up on the steering wheel and the other against his seat to hold himself steady.

"Most people can honestly claim to also have a handful of redeemable traits," Loki asserts, and before Tony can say something in dissent, he's diving into a second argument, one more valid than the first:

"I get upset and emotional over stupid, insignificant things." He raises another finger. "Two."

"You have bipolar disorder," Tony sighs, resting his temple against his palm in exasperation.

"I'm not going to use that as a crutch," Loki insists, his voice just the slightest bit churlish.

"I'm not telling you to use it as a crutch!" Tony cries, eyes wide and tone straining. "I'm  _telling_  you that it's not your fault you're so sensitive, and even if it is, there's nothing wrong with being that way."

"There  _is_  something wrong with being that way when the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning is sheer force of will," Loki says. He leans back against the passenger door, swiping at the tears in his eyes with his forefinger and his thumb as he adds, "That's something  _you've_  given me." He sniffles. "I haven't gotten it for myself."

Tony opens his mouth to speak, but no words emerge from him. He simply watches Loki with a sad, longing pair of eyes, watches him sniff and wipe his nose and his cheeks with the cuff of his sleeve until he decides to go on listing reasons why he deserved every dreadful year of childhood and adolescence he ever endured.

"And I think horrible things, and I'm selfish," Loki continues, softer and meeker than he was before. "I'm a compulsive liar. I'm whiny. I say things just to hurt people. It's nearly impossible for me to let others in. I'm a walking mass of complexes. I'm never satisfied. I  _hate_ …" He pauses, lowering his gaze to one wrinkled belt loop at Tony's waist with a shaky sigh. "I hate  _everything_. So much." He forces himself to return his damp, shining pale eyes to Tony's dark ones, which are deep enough for him to drown in at the moment. "I'm an inch away from offing myself or everyone around me. What  _isn't_  awful about me?"

Tony's expression pinches painfully at the question, and without warning, he's leaning forward and taking Loki's face into his hands, tugging him across the center console so much like he was being tugged a month (a  _month_ ) ago and kissing him right under his lips, threading his fingers through his hair and nudging their noses together in a way that's so affectionate and  _sweet_  it has Loki going half-limp with emotion. He keeps kissing Loki's face, his chin, his jaws, his cheeks, his nose – everywhere but his mouth – and by the time he's reached Loki's eyelids, he's giving him an answer.

"You're smart," he murmurs between every peck he plants on Loki's skin. "You're hilarious. You're beautiful. You're witty. You  _feel_ , so much and so hard, and you care. You're talented. You're different." Tony laughs into Loki's cheek. "You love  _me_ , so you  _must_  be some kind of phenomenal."

Loki allows himself a small smile, whispers, "You're being hypocritical."

"As are you," Tony points out, pulling away from Loki to look him in the eyes and give him this lopsided smirk he's impossibly good at wearing. "You're human, Loki. Nothing's ever gonna stop you from being that way."

Loki's smile deepens the slightest bit at that, and he does this thing where he looks down and shrugs a little and refuses to actually say ' _thank you_ ' but manages to articulate it perfectly with the way his lips twitch and the way his breathing evens out and the way his fingers curl around Tony's when the man takes his hand.

And then Tony's kissing him again, soft and gentle and only slightly exploratory, his lips parting to take Loki's bottom one between them, and the rain is beating down a little bit harder than it was a few seconds ago, and Loki can hear Tony shifting in his seat, can feel one of the man's hands slipping down his side to pull him nearer, the other reaching for the door handle to close the distance between them even further, and suddenly, he's remembering that he needs to fix them, because he  _knows_  how much more he's going to hate himself if he gets lost in Tony without verbally admitting  _why_  he's taking that wrong turn for the fourteen millionth time in only thirty or so days, and he  _knows_  what an injustice it would be to both of him if he went without saying anything along the lines of ' _I really do love you a whole lot_ ' and ' _I want us to be Facebook official_ '.

"I have to tell you something," Loki says against Tony's mouth once the man has let him breathe long enough for him to speak.

"Tell me something, then," Tony replies somewhat distractedly, kissing his way down Loki's chin. He doesn't actually look at Loki or stop his ministrations until Loki's placed a hand on his chest and pushed him about an inch and a half away, and the expression he directs at him is inquisitive and interested in a way that doesn't seem  _too_  forced.

Then Loki's taking a deep breath and feeling like a stupid middle-schooler and looking Tony in the eyes and parting his lips and oh  _God_ ,  _yeah_ , he's going to say this and words are coming out of him and he's too shocked and stunned to even know anything about them save for what they mean and he's just  _bewildered_  at the fact that they're actually slipping past his lips and the only way he knows he's making sense or surmounting some kind of wall is the look on Tony's face and the way it changes as he just  _says_  it, says, "I don't just  _like_  you, Tony."

Tony blinks, his brow furrowing the slightest bit in what almost looks like fear. There's a beat of silence before he's asking, "What?", even though they both know that he heard  _exactly_  what Loki just said – he simply didn't believe he did.

"I don't just  _like_  you," Loki repeats, nearly shaking with anxiety. "And I don't just want to get into bed with you because you know your way around a dance floor or because of Steve, or Thor, or Fandral, or anyone." He swallows thickly, watching with acute interest as Tony does the same a moment after, and when the man neglects to say anything or move, Loki decides that it's safe for him to continue.

"You don't just make me happy. You make…" He pauses, groping around in his mind for something accurate and beautiful and not too exaggerated. "You make it okay for me to do things like laugh like a hyena or dance like a fool or smile like there are actually things worth smiling over." Almost comically, he smirks, then. " _You're_  something worth smiling over. And when you touch me –" He has to remind himself that only  _Tony_  is hearing this, that he shouldn't be embarrassed, that it's okay to say things like this to someone who holds your heart just as carefully and defensively as you do, it's okay, it's  _okay_  – "When you touch me, I feel like breathing is so unnecessary and like touching anything else after we've contacted each other is just ludicrous, or criminal, or pointless, and  _god_ , you're the most flawed person I know but somehow, I love you more and more every time you're imperfect around me."

Tony's eyes are wide and alarmed, now, and he's looking just like a crippled, drenched,  _beaten_  deer in the headlights as he listens to Loki, as he so obviously hangs onto every word that falls from his lips like the letters that compose them are whispers of a dream he's not ready to wake up from yet. Loki starts to reach out to touch the man's face, but his mind (heart, same difference) quickly tells him that he isn't done yet, so he just wills himself to grab the side of his seat and squeeze the leather there as hard as possible.

"Earlier, when I called you, I heard your voice and didn't know why I wanted to die," Loki says, and when Tony's expression contorts into something slightly affronted, he laughs and adds, "Well, I  _did_ , but only after I'd gotten in the shower and thought about it for a little while."

Tony's frown softens a bit, but he maintains his unusual, frightening silence. Loki continues again.

"I think it was because I knew that if I'd been on the phone with anyone else and they sounded as tired as you did, I would have thought them vulnerable. But you –" He breathes out a brief, somewhat sad chuckle, casting his eyes downward. "I thought you were beautiful in the oddest, most human way there is to be beautiful, and you calmed me down when you started to speak, and only  _you_  can do that, and I don't know how to deal with something so wonderful, and that kind of makes me just a little  _terrified_  of the thought of living any longer than today." Loki shakes his head a bit, taking a few seconds to catch his breath and steady his pitch as well as his volume. "I'd never want to lose something as perfect as your voice when you've just woken up and you're talking to me on the phone, or as honest as you calling me out on my bullshit, or as wonderful as the way you smell right now, or as simple as you kissing my fingers."

Tony breaks his silence, then, but all that comes out of him is a hushed, strained, "Loki…", and it's like last night all over again, and he looks like he might cry but he's trained himself to be fiery enough to dry up any tears that threaten to fall and icy enough to shut his weakness down and out, but Loki's  _still_  not done, and he's going to keep talking even if the way Tony says his name kills him, makes him want to kiss his throat until his voice is strong enough to laugh and rumble like it usually does.

"And I know I'm  _so_ late and I'm a jackass for being so late, and maybe you were right when you said that the reason why I'm doing this or saying this or  _feeling_  this now is because Thor's moved in with me, but I'm  _still_  feeling it, aren't I?" Loki blinks as soon as he's aware of the burning and the moisture in his eyes, watches as Tony's gaze quickly follows the tear that escapes down his cheek before moving back to where it had been focused on what Loki's sure is his left iris (because you really  _can't_  look at both of a person's eyes at the same time, no matter  _what_ authors want you to think). He lets go of his seat to drive the heel of his palm into his eyes, trying in vain to rid himself of his tears as he goes on with, "And I'm sorry for making you wait and using you and lying for so long, and you don't deserve that and I don't deserve you, and I'm sorry you had to pick me, and I'm sorry I'm not Steve, and  _fuck_  – I don't just  _want_  you." He cuts himself off with a sharp, shuddery breath, biting the inside of his mouth to keep himself from  _screaming_  when he says, "I  _need_  you. And I don't just  _like_  you." He smiles again, lips red and cheeks flushed and eyes damper than the Pacific Ocean. "I'm in  _love_  with you. Madly. I mean that with everything in me."

Tony doesn't say anything, but the way he's looking at Loki like his eyes are lightning rods and he's got that organ we like to call a heart stuck in his throat says so much more than words ever could. He's terrified and shocked and overwhelmed all at once, and Loki only ever sees such a raw look on Tony's face when the man has been ranting about California and the day he took a crowbar to his father's Lamborghini and got his nose broken by a fist full of rings, when he's been too twitchy and too talkative and too high on Adderall or when he's been shaking under Loki's hands from alcohol withdrawal, when he's been swearing up and down to Loki that he'd  _die_  if he left him, when he's been telling Loki the things that Loki's telling him now – ' _Sorry I'm a fuck-up_ ', ' _I'm deeply in love with you_ ' – and it just hits Loki like a ton of bricks that Tony is just as fucking  _scared_  as he is, that Tony might run away from him, that even though Tony's been whispering to Loki that he loves him so much,  _so much_ , for countless nights since last December, he's only ever been taught to flee from responsibility or commitment, that even though Loki is one of the few people he's actually stayed with for a substantial amount of time, he's still learning that relationships can't only survive on unspoken agreements and waiting for the other person to eventually escape (like they always do). And Loki realizes that he needs to remind Tony that this is what he wanted. He needs to remind Tony that he's not asking for anything Tony wasn't already prepared to give him. He needs to remind Tony that they promised each other something, and that he's excellent at keeping his promises.

"Remember last year, when I told you that I wasn't ready for you then, but that I would be someday?" Loki asks, and when Tony gives him a tiny, ray-of-light of a nod, he finally lets himself cup the man's jaw in his hand and brush his fingers over his cheekbone and say, "I'm ready now."

Remembrance flashes in Tony's eyes one moment, and in the next, he's got Loki almost completely across the center console and as much in his lap as he can possibly get him considering the lack of space in the cockpit of his truck. His fingers are in Loki's hair and he's kissing him so  _deeply_  and his mouth is wet and branding and desperate on the other's and he's groaning softly and Loki can feel how beautifully  _warm_  he is through the fabric of his sweatshirt and through Tony's Henley and his hands are plastered against the window and their legs are tangled together and Tony's licking into his mouth and he's shuddering above him and then Tony's head is falling against the window and he's panting hot, damp breaths against Loki's lips and his eyes are almost smoldering with heat and his fingers are tightening in Loki's hair and he's saying, "I love you  _so much_."

Loki can't help but let out a laugh at that, a laugh of amusement and endearment and unadulterated  _joy_ , and the way Tony's whole  _being_  brightens and the way his expression blooms with happiness and wonder and the way his hands tighten their grip on his sides convinces Loki that he's done the right thing by being honest for once. He replies, "You know I love you, too," and the  _look_  Tony gives him, his face alight with glee and his eyes just brimming with adoration – it makes him want to dance in the rain that's steadily falling outside.

"Pinch me," Tony demands a bit breathlessly, slipping one hand out of Loki's hair to grab the man's wrist and guide him towards his shoulder. When Loki laughs again, he insists, "Pinch me or slap me or something! Just do it!"

Loki awkwardly tweaks Tony's chin between his thumb and forefinger, grinning when Tony hum-chuckles in bliss and moves his hands to his sides to pull their bodies flush together and have them kissing again, have his lips traveling down his jaw and neck in a manner that's both possessive and loving. As soon as his mouth is at the junction of Loki's neck and shoulder, he's babbling, "I can't believe you're mine. I can't believe you're  _here_. I can't believe you exist, oh my  _God_ , you're so perfect…"

"I wouldn't go  _that_  far," Loki laughs, hissing softly when Tony closes his teeth over his collarbone and bites down hard enough to hurt, if only a little.

"Don't argue with me, y-you divine creature," Tony retorts. He fixes Loki with a pair of eyes that reflect every emotion scattered in the spaces between devotion and terror and euphoria. "I need to show you how much–" He cuts himself off with a thick gulp, craning his neck upwards so that he can speak right against Loki's mouth, quiet and intimate and right where he's the most safe. "I need to show you how much I love you."

"You already have," Loki murmurs, quivering the slightest bit with the strain of having to hold himself up for so long.

"No," Tony replies, giving a brief shake of his head. He pushes them both up into a sitting position (as opposed the half-lying one they were just in), dropping a quick peck on Loki's lips as he says, "No, I haven't. Have I kissed every inch of you yet?"

That's when Loki remembers that no matter how good Tony is with words, his feelings are something he expresses in a primarily physical manner, and suddenly, he's comparing every time he's ever verbally told Tony he loved him to every time he's kissed him or held him or ran his fingers through his hair or wound an arm about his middle. Sure enough, the reception he gets is better when both of their bodies are involved.

In response to Tony's question, Loki simply shakes his head. Tony smirks.

"My point exactly," the man says, reaching around Loki to tug on the handle behind him, effectively unlatching the door as he does, and order, "Get out."

Loki mirrors the smirk Tony's giving him, only hesitating for a moment before backing out of his seat and finding himself standing on the solid ground that is Tony's driveway and getting drenched with rain. He hastily meets Tony at the foot of his front steps, laughing softly when the man just grabs him by the arms and pulls him close, kissing him and squeezing him like the two seconds they were physically separated was torture of the most unbearable and cruel nature, like they aren't just standing in the middle of a rain shower in plain sight of every rich, snooty neighbor Tony has.

"Stop crying, silly," Tony tells him, wiping at the tears still escaping down his cheeks and dragging him up the stairs and onto his porch. "I'd think you'd be happy right now, or something."

Loki keeps his arms around Tony's middle as the man fumbles with his keys, burying his face in the nape of Tony's neck as he replies, nearly whispering, "I am."

Tony pauses, them, house key hanging in its keyhole as he turns to take Loki into his embrace again, to kiss his tear-stained cheek and down to his neck, sucking raindrops off of his skin as he goes. By the time he's come up for air, he's got Loki pressed against the door (oh, how  _surprising_ ), his thigh wedged between the other's and Loki's limbs draped about his shoulders, and he's _laughing_ , nuzzling their dripping noses together like they've got all the time in the world to just dwell on every little bit of each other. Loki sighs in frustration (of the good-natured sort, mind you).

"Unlock the door –" he starts to say, but Tony's pulling back and looking him straight in the face and cutting him off with a question delivered so seriously that it takes Loki a few delayed moments to process exactly what he means by it (and he  _does_  mean it –  _gravely_ ).

"What if I took you right here, right now?" Tony asks, face straight and solemn and sultry and so deliberate it's insane. "What if I peeled your clothes off and made you mine  _exactly_  where we're standing?"

Blood rushes to Loki's cheeks at the image Tony's shoved into his mind, something the man must see (and how could he  _not_  when Loki is the goddamn lovechild of Snow White and Dracula?), because his serious expression gives way to the tiniest of smirks as Loki counters, in a surprisingly unflustered tone, "This isn't  _The Notebook_."

Tony laughs wholeheartedly at that, swooping in to kiss Loki hard on the lips and pushing him further against the dark red wood behind him as he does. He deftly unlocks the door with the hand he hasn't got resting at the base of Loki's back, grinning the slightest bit and chuckling into the half-inch of space between their mouths, "You didn't answer my question."

"I'd  _let_ you, okay?" Loki huffs, sliding one arm from around Tony's neck to grope around behind him until his hand finds the doorknob, and without hesitation, he jerks it to the right and kicks the door open. He's nipping at Tony's lips only a second later, practically growling, "At this point, I think I'd let you do  _anything_  to me if you just promised not to  _stop_."

Tony's grin grows almost hilariously fast at that. "I like this," he says, keeping Loki held tightly in his arms as he half-crowds, half-carries the man into the threshold of his house. He grabs his keys and toes the door back into its frame, not bothering to lock it behind him as he goes on, "You're not pushing me away. You're not telling me to stop. You're actually going to let me have my way with you." He tilts his head a bit, quirking an eyebrow. "You sure I'm not dreaming?"

Loki doesn't answer verbally, just smirks, threads his fingers through the damp mess of Tony's hair, and pulls him into another kiss, one deeper and more insistent, more  _demanding_ , than the barrage Tony was forcing on him before. Tony moans into the kiss the second Loki parts his lips to let his tongue dart out and taste him, runs the tip of it along the seam of his mouth, coaxes more pleasured, wanting noises out of him. Both of them let out this near-comical, soft, gasping sort of sound in almost complete unison as soon as their tongues touch, and then they're just licking at each other's mouths with such inertia, such slow,  _beautiful_  ease, that Loki doesn't know that they've built up such an ardent intensity until they're practically  _clinging_  to each other, sucking the breath straight from one another's lungs every time they've spectacularly managed to force their mouths to separate and groaning and growling like two felines in heat. Tony's hands are slipping up the back of Loki's shirt, his fingers tracing each vertebra of his spine like they're travelers wandering down a vaguely familiar path, and  _God_ , that  _has_  to be a fetish of Loki's or something, because every time Tony touches his backbone, Loki starts shivering and writing under his hands like he's been submerged in boiling-cold water.

And then Tony breaks their kiss for only a moment, clasping his hands to the back of Loki's thighs and using the leverage he was with the man's arms wound tightly around his neck to heft him up and off the ground, wrapping his legs about his waist and supporting him with his hips. Loki makes a surprised noise at the action, but anything else he might let escape him disappears into nothing when Tony claims his lips again, feverish and insistent and like lava scorching its way through a village or the ocean sweeping debris away from the shore, when he starts to cross the living room with the obvious objective of taking him to bed. It's a slightly awkward fit, considering Loki's lanky, stalky proportions and Tony's wiry, lean, sturdy physique, but Tony's quite a bit hardier than he looks, and Loki's been carried and dragged around by the man more times than one would consider normal for two male friends.

And  _really_ , someday Loki will think about the two of them and realize that they were never really  _just_ friends or exempt from some form of romantic or sexual attraction between them, not when the only reason why they met in the first place is because Tony didn't think twice about making a pass at the one person in their theatre class that nobody wanted or was brave enough to talk to, not when one of the first things they did together as actual, official friends was come to understand that physical contact was something they'd be in more often than not if Tony had anything to do with it and learn how to synchronize rhythms whenever they danced in the vicinity of one another, not when Loki has always been a fifties' era housewife when it comes to Tony in the way that he puts food in his kitchen and cooks him dinner and straightens his shirt collars and nurses him back to health, not when they've been sharing casual kisses and holding each other at night and calling each other things like ' _love_ ' and ' _sweetheart_ ' since last December. Attraction was never the issue, here –  _fear_  was always the main thing that stopped them from not wasting a year skipping around their feelings and playing perfectly at verisimilitude without ever crossing the bridge to reality.

It's dark in Tony's room when they enter it, no thanks to the nasty weather and the curtains over the man's windows, but Tony is almost too good at navigating its space while blindly carrying a person of almost equal size and weight through it – something Loki tries and fails not to think about. Tony walks until his shins hit the foot of his bed, and then he's kneeing his way onto it, lowering Loki to the mattress even as he keeps his hands on the backs of his haunches and lets his lips linger on his skin. They stay like that, sharing wet, openmouthed kisses and wound around each other as if they'd  _die_  if they weren't, until it's almost unbearable for Loki to be content with the existence of clothing in general and the fact that Tony refuses to put his lips anywhere but on his, because he's got last night  _still_  fresh in his mind, because they're  _in Tony's bed_  (and you  _all_  know what happens there), because the thought of anyone else that's been here before him makes him a little crazily eager to wipe them out in the most aggressive, passionate way possible.

Loki growls quietly, biting hard at Tony's lips and sucking his way down the man's neck, his teeth leaving shallow, pinkish marks wherever they decide to sink into his skin and his fingers roughly pulling at his unruly hair. He closes his lips around Tony's Adam's apple with the intention of leaving a bruise there, one everyone who paid attention might see, trembling at the deep, throaty noises coming out of the man, and  _yes_ , Tony's  _squeezing_  him, relocating his hands to bracket his hips and running them down the insides of his thighs before moving right back up, his thumbs pressing into the dip of his loins, so close to where Loki wants him. Tony doesn't move any further than that, though, doesn't do anything but rub his fingers in small circles on Loki's skin and kiss at his temple, and Loki is kind of going  _crazy_  because of it.

" _Tony_ ," he half-whines, scratching at the man's back through his shirt and nipping sharply at his jaw. Tony just chuckles lowly, dipping his head to catch Loki by the mouth again, and when Loki snarls and pushes into the kiss almost combatively, teeth biting and tongue probing and fingers pulling at his Henley like they'd rip the fabric to shreds if they could, Tony grips his sides and pushes him back against the mattress, onto his elbows. Loki can't help but scowl at the man.

"What?" he huffs, breathless, resisting the urge to rid Tony of his clothing with his teeth alone. When he reaches up to play with the hem of his shirt, Tony easily bats his hand away with a tiny smirk and a laugh.

"You're funny," he chuckles, gazing down at Loki with nothing but want and adoration in his eyes. It occurs to Loki that Tony is in absolutely no hurry at all (odd, considering how eager he was in the truck and on the porch) – a realization that only serves to further frustrate him.

" _What?_ " he repeats, more urgent and irritable this time around, his voice rising to an octave that more accurately reflects how desperate he is for Tony to get on with it or touch him or let him do  _anything_  besides just lay down.

Tony leans over Loki, bracing himself with an arm at either side of him and his palms wrapped around his wrists like manacles as he kisses him, slowly and deeply and (of course) on the lips. He drags the kiss out for as long as he can, drags it out until Loki's shaking from the lack of oxygen and squirming in his hold, his legs tightening around his waist and his body growing taut with tension.

"Relax," Tony tells him, trailing his mouth to Loki's jaw and up to his earlobe, where he can laugh, "Not everything has to be a fight, you know."

Loki's aware of the fact that Tony's speaking to him honestly and without the intent to hurt him, but he can't help but be a little stung by the man's words. It's in his very  _nature_  to be a fighter – he never even  _considered_  that things could go any differently for him.

Tony rears back to look at him, touching their noses together and kissing the space below his mouth as he murmurs, "I want you to enjoy this."

"I'd enjoy it either way," Loki argues almost immediately. Tony sucks a kiss to his bottom lip with a knowing smirk.

"Why would you want to move so fast, though?" he asks, genuinely curious.

"Why  _wouldn't_  I?" Loki counters, frowning slightly even as Tony nuzzles at his cheek like the affectionate puppy dog he is. "Why wouldn't  _you?_ "

That forces Tony to look him in the face again, and the man's expression is more serious than it was before when he replies, "I want to cherish every little bit of you. I want to get you as high as you can possibly be for as long as I possibly can. I want you to feel  _everything_." His lips quirk into a tiny smile. " _That's_  why I wouldn't."

Loki can't make himself come up with a response to that, can only try to breathe at a normal rate and will himself into calmness and let himself trust that Tony knows what he's doing and isn't simply trying to torture him. He gives Tony a tiny nod of acceptance, and then the man's slipping his hands beneath his sweater and pulling it off of him, exposing his skin to the chilly air in the room.

A wave of self-consciousness that wasn't even a  _notion_  to him last night washes over Loki when Tony's eyes rake over his body as if he's never seen it before now, and he tries to tell himself that being shy is ridiculous when a few minutes ago, he was ready to kick the serpent in the Garden of Eden in the mouth for ever tempting Eve and indirectly causing the invention of clothing, when Tony's seen him half-naked before and probably thought the same things he's thinking now, when he  _trusts_  Tony, but he's never been totally comfortable with his own physique and Tony's just  _drinking_   _him in_  with his eyes without uttering a single word and  _well_ , nakedness between one set of clothes and another is totally different than nakedness before sex, am I right? Loki fidgets a bit in discomfort, drawing Tony's gaze to his face.

"When's the last time you had sex?" Tony asks, leaning over Loki again and pressing his lips to his temple.

For a moment, Loki's assaulted with disgust and fear and shame – not because of the question itself, but because of the memory it evokes, and he's suddenly acutely aware of how tight Tony's hands feel around his wrists and how very  _vulnerable_  he is right now and how Tony's hovering above him without really touching him, and he almost  _panics_  because of those thoughts, but that tightness can also be called security, and vulnerability is simply another word for openness, and Tony  _is_  touching him, and he's touching him so gently and so lovingly he's going to remember it _years_  from now and still get weak in the knees. Plus, it's just a question – one he shouldn't be afraid to respond to.

But then the answer reveals itself to him and Loki's replying, "Over a year," and Tony's pulling back to give him the most comically flabbergasted look of all  _time_  and oh hey, here comes self-consciousness building a nest in Loki's chest again.

"Over a  _year?_ " Tony echoes, disbelieving.

"Over two," Loki amends. Is that a collective gasp of absolute and utter shock I hear?

"Over  _ **two**_ _years?_ " Tony questions, slack-jawed and wide-eyed. When Loki silently lowers his eyes, he starts to shake his head, says, "No, no, no, no, don't be embarrassed. It's just…  _two years?_ "

"You know I would have told you if I'd slept with someone while we were friends, right?" Loki asks, more to prove a point than to actually obtain an answer.

"Yeah, but–" Tony begins, only to be cut off by Loki before he can go any further.

"And  _you_  haven't had sex with anyone since before the summer," Loki points out. His point is slightly invalid when he knows the reason  _why_  Tony's remained so oddly celibate for such a long time, that reason being  _him_ , but he's always been somewhat prone to building arguments on top of less-than-stable foundations (and it's not like Tony will really care about the flimsy little plea he's throwing at him by the time today is over and done with).

Even so, Tony pouts at him, starts to retort, "That's a completely diff–"

"And you know I'm antisocial and incapable of forming relationships with other people," Loki goes on instead of letting Tony tell him something he already knows, sitting up as much as he can without knocking the other's forehead with his own.

"You're also one of the sexiest and most sensual things I've ever seen," Tony practically blurts out, smirking when Loki's eyes widen and his cheeks flush in response to the comment. He tilts his head and sways in close to Loki, their noses bumping when he does, asks, "Why do you think I can't keep my hands or eyes off of you?"

Loki gives an impish little smile, replies, "I thought that maybe it had something to do with your deep, undying love for me, but I could be wrong."

Tony grins at the jest, shaking his head and laughing quietly in bewilderment. " _Two years_ ," he marvels, craning his neck to kiss along Loki's jawline and to the hypersensitive spot below his ear as he draws his hand down his abdomen, lower and lower, until his fingers are resting on the button of his jeans. "No wonder you're so frustrated."

Loki starts to say something witty and defiant in response to that, but the only thing that comes out of him is a sharp, breathy moan when Tony gets his pants open and slips his hand inside to palm his groin, his mouth gradually working its way down his neck and the weight of his body pressing him into the mattress like gravity keeps fourteen billion feet on the ground and drags ships to the ocean floor without even trying. Loki's back arches up off of the bed and his legs fall open of their own accord as Tony sucks openmouthed kisses along the pale column of his throat and just  _touches_ him, strokes his fingers over his cock through the thin fabric of his underwear, and Loki can feel the man smiling into his skin – the  _bastard_  – and he's absolutely certain in some distant, psychoanalytical corner of his mind that Tony's getting off on being in near complete control of him and everything they're engaged in at the moment, and every breath he inhales feels fucking enormous and he's nearly hyperventilating with pleasure and it feels so boiling-water, broken-fever, core-of-the Earth  _warm_  in the pit of his stomach and he doesn't think he's ever been so turned on by anything in his  _life_  and his arms are wrapped tight around Tony's shoulders and his fingers are tangled in his damp, wild hair and he's breathing so hard against the side of the man's head because Tony is just fucking  _touching him_ , so leisurely and lazily and wantonly it almost hurts, and all while he cages him in the arc of his body and mouths fire into his skin.

Then Tony laughs and says, "You're so  _perfect_ ," against his neck, moving his hands away from where Loki's straining and flexing to rest them on his hips. Loki is just coherent enough to get upset at the sudden decrease in attention, but it doesn't take long for he and Tony's mouths meet for the millionth time, doesn't take long for him to pull and tug at Tony's Henley, drag the article up his back and half-murmur, "Your turn."

Thunder rumbles from outside as Tony obliges Loki and leans back to pull his shirt off, and Loki only has a couple of fleeting moments to look at the man and realize just  _why_  he was studying him as intensely as he was a few minutes ago before Tony's marking things unfair again by tugging his pants, shoes, and socks off all in one go, and then he's so exposed, he doesn't even know what to do with himself. He just nearly refrains from curling up and hiding from Tony's eyes, which are suddenly all over him again now that he's nearly naked.

Without a word, Tony bows over Loki and presses his lips to his collarbone, easily skirting around the pendant hanging there and ignoring the other's soft growl of irritation. He slowly trails his kisses to Loki's shoulder, lets his mouth linger on the tender, seldom-touched place at the inside of his elbow and the smooth curve of his wrist before he's grazing over his sternum and licking his way downwards, tongue drawing idle patterns and lazy figure-eights on the snowy expanse of Loki's skin. He keeps Loki's hands pinned to the mattress as he dawdles, as he sucks his nipples into his mouth and leaves red, branding marks wherever he sees fit to, and the whole thing is simultaneously infuriating and therapeutic for Loki to endure as obediently and speechlessly as he is, and every time he squirms, Tony squeezes his wrists or nips his skin a little bit harder, and every time he groans, Tony laughs into his chest or leans up to drop a kiss or two on his neck or his chin or his mouth, and every time he kisses him, it's like the rain outside gets so much louder in Loki's head, like he could feel and hear  _everything_  if he wanted to, and _really_  – nobody's ever touched Loki like this. Nobody.

Tony stops his torturing for a moment to ask, "What happened?", and when Loki looks down to see what the man's talking about, he finds him hovering over that damned hypertrophic scar on his abdomen. He doesn't have time to prepare himself before Tony's running a finger across the distorted tissue surrounding it, the gnarled bits of skin that pinch and crimp where they meet the scar, and  _shit_ , his stomach feels like it's devouring itself now, and his whole body is suddenly full of tiny spiders crawling up the inside of his flesh and through his veins, and he's  _blushing_ , blushing with fear and with shame, and Tony's gazing at him so curiously, and he has to answer, and –

"Car accident," he manages to splutter out in response as soon as he can actually realize that  _oh_ ,  _that's_  what bothers him so much about Tony touching him there,  _that's_  why he suddenly can't hear anything beyond the breath that's miraculously escaping him. As soon as the words are out of him, Tony's expression darkens with understanding and empathy, and the man watches Loki carefully as he dips his head and brushes his lips over the ridge of the scar like it's something worth worshipping and not the sole bit of physical evidence of everything awful and broken about Loki. He's just barely touching it, but Loki feels like every single nerve in his body is suddenly in that pale little fold of his skin.

He's just barely touching it, and Loki's got tears in his eyes.

"My rib… my rib broke the skin there," Loki mumbles. He doesn't know why he's telling Tony this, but it probably has something to do with the fact that Tony's the only person who's ever really seen and looked at this part of him, the fact that he feels like his scar is a crime he has to explain himself for committing, the fact that Tony's rubbing his thumb over the damn thing like he might unleash a genie if he does it long enough.

"Shh…" Tony hushes him, having heard the tears in Loki's voice. Loki doesn't stop talking, though.

"They put six stitches in there to close it," he goes on, tensing as Tony lets go of his wrists to wrap his arms around his torso and hold him snug against his body. Loki twitches beneath Tony's mouth when the man kisses his scar again, whispers, "It's ugly."

"It's  _you_ ," Tony counters, squeezing Loki and smiling sadly up at him. "And I love you, so I love it."

The man's reply is too simple and sweet and  _true_  for Loki to even argue with it. He simply lays back and accepts as Tony experimentally scratches a fingernail over the scar, as the man watches with the utmost intrigue as his body flinches and shakes and writhes like a snake trapped under a rock, and Loki can't stop Tony from pulling him closer and kissing that hypersensitive, too-tender spot once, twice, three times more, again and again until his whole being is entirely composed of shivers and his head is tipping back and he's letting out quiet gasps every time Tony lets his lips linger there a few seconds longer than usual. The rain pours harder, the room grows darker, and Tony makes his way down the flat, milky plane of Loki's abdomen.

When Tony reaches Loki's hips, he doesn't hesitate to peel the waistband of his underwear back, to inch the elastic over his skin so that he can lick and kiss at his Adonis lines, his tongue dipping into the curves of his pelvis as he travels further down. Loki's restless and worked up again, waiting for Tony to expose him some more, wanting it like he's never wanted anything before, but Tony's just  _taking_   _his time_  focusing on one singular spot on his left hip – a freckle, something that's almost impossible to make out in the darkness of his room. Loki huffs, impatient, when Tony lightly nips at him, when he playfully closes his canines around the bone of his hip, when he blows cool air where he's left saliva and tiny indentations on his skin with his tongue and his teeth.

"I like your underwear," Tony comments offhandedly, rubbing his thumb almost cruelly over the Charmander printed across the front of Loki's briefs.

"I hate you," Loki snaps in reply, sitting up on his elbows to stare down at Tony and fix him with a look that conveys only a fraction of his vexation.

"I think you were made for me," Tony rambles on in spite of Loki's irritation, and just as Loki, unraveled and emotional and on the verge of splitting at the seams with sexual frustration and misplaced nostalgia and unparalleled passion, starts to contradict and curse him, Tony gives him a wordless, lopsided smirk and swiftly tugs his underwear down and off of him, and Loki is silent and bare and nervous and blushing and aroused all at once, and Tony  _still_ has the upper hand, and life is simply refusing to be fair.

"I also think I like this better," Tony notes. What an asshole.

"I think you're too dressed," Loki counters a bit unsteadily, watching anxiously as Tony takes him in, as he rubs a hand up the back of his thigh and bites his lip against God knows what.

"I think I agree with you," Tony replies a bit absently, sitting up and moving to shed his own pants (and of course, not his underwear). He kneels between Loki's legs once his jeans have been forgotten on the floor, deftly hooking one of his knees over his shoulder and trailing long, damp kisses down the inside of his trembling thighs, and oh  _yeah_ , Loki's seriously shaking with anxiety, clutching at the messy, wrinkled sheets beneath his fingers as Tony laves at his skin and nuzzles closer to his groin, because this man has been his  _best friend_  for a whole  _year_  and he's got his mouth sucking circular spots of fire in places only one person's ever touched before, and definitely  _not_ with their lips.

"Stop that," Tony eventually murmurs into his thigh, gently grazing his incisors over the porcelain-white, extraordinarily tender skin there.

"Stop what?" Loki asks, voice a mere afterthought of a whisper. Tony's dark, smoldering eyes flick upwards to lock onto his own, a small smile gracing his face and a spark of heat in his gaze.

"Stop anticipating," Tony orders gently, circling his thumb right where Loki's leg meets his pelvis. He's only inches away from Loki's steadily growing erection, where Loki needs him to be, and Loki feels like he might go  _insane_  if he doesn't just  _touch_  him again, even if only for a few seconds.

"But I want you so much," Loki insists. He fails to keep the nearly incapacitating desperation out of his words, fails to keep himself from quivering when he discovers that Tony's head is practically  _in his lap_ , his breath ghosting over the head of his cock and his eyes fixed on his. Tony squeezes his thighs with a smirk.

"I want you, too," he replies, angling his head so that his hair brushes against Loki's skin in a way so minute but so incredibly  _tangible_  it sends a sharp tremor up his spine. His smirk turns knowing and vague a second before he adds, "I just want you slowly."

As soon as the last word passes between Tony's lips, the man's tongue is pressing hotly against the tip of Loki's cock and tonguing at the slit of him, and it takes all the self-control he has and a moan so asthmatic it's almost  _painful_  as it escapes him for Loki to not come flying out of his skin right then and there. Tony watches him, wolfish and totally transfixed, as he mouths his way down his shaft, as he sucks and kisses lower and lower, as he sits up, wrapping his arms securely around his waist, and drags Loki's hips up and off the bed, licking a thick stripe of saliva straight from the crest of his head to the tight ring of muscle surrounding his entrance, slipping his tongue inside of him and fucking him with his mouth, over and over until Loki's gasping words start to mesh together and he's dripping wet with precome, his whole body flushed with pleasure, his hair a black halo splayed across the pillow beneath it, his eyes rolling back in his head until they close, his fingers digging into the mattress.

"You don't know how beautiful you are right now," Tony says, his eyes wild with lust and still glued to Loki's face as he plasters kisses all over the rosy skin on the inside of his thigh. "You don't know how long I've wanted to get you this way."

"I-I do," Loki manages after a moment of miraculous thought, breath catching uncomfortably in his throat and ripping out of him in the form of a gasp when Tony licks across his hole, and while he might have thought that something like this was pretty gross before now, when Tony is swirling the tip of his tongue around his entrance in a way that  _cannot_  be human and mouthing at every erogenous zone he can find between his legs and watching him so damn  _hungrily_ , he  _knows_  he's going to dream about this for nights on end,  _knows_  he's going to be  _begging_  for Tony to be here every time they find themselves in bed and in the mood to get a little more than intimate.

"No, you don't," Tony argues with a bright, arrogant grin. He slips a hand down Loki's front, something fiery and possessive lighting up in his eyes every time Loki twitches and squirms, and he asks, "Remember when you read that poem last year in theatre, the one about the moon and kisses and dying for love?"

Loki laughs breathlessly at the arbitrariness of the question, at the position they're in, at the fact that Tony's recalling something so insignificant as he's memorizing the curves and the dips and the softness of his groin with his tastebuds alone. "Yes," he half-chuckles, half-groans, peering up at Tony from where he's almost bent in half.

"That's when I knew," Tony says. He lowers Loki back down to the mattress so that he can look at him more directly, his mouth dragging up his thigh and briefly puckering against his calf as he does. "That's when I knew you were going to end up in my bed one day."

Loki laughs again, turning his face halfway into Tony's pillow without even thinking about how he's tucking himself away by doing so, but Tony is leaning over him, slipping between his legs and caging him in his arms and dropping soft kisses along his jaw and pressing him into the bed so that it's  _impossible_ for him to hide, and he's forcing him to look at him, and he's leaning their foreheads together and gazing at him with such open thirst and devotion, and he's sighing into the small space between their lips, sighing like he's praying to  _God_ , sighing, "Oh,  _Loki_."

"Yes?" Loki finds himself replying, his voice all low and nearly nonexistent again. Tony melts at the sound of him, makes this purring, hot-candle-wax sort of noise and kisses him hard on the mouth, and Loki's not entirely sure what to do with the fact that another human being has the potential to lose their mind simply because they've heard him speak in hushed, breathy tones.

He doesn't have much time to dwell on that thought, though, because as soon as Tony's pulled their lips apart, he's whispering,  _promising_ , "I'm gonna fuck you, now," and for some reason, that statement has Loki realizing that more than anything, more than he's aroused or scared or anxious or shocked, he's  _happy_. For the first time in a long time, he's genuinely  _happy_. He's not sure what to do with that either.

"I love you," Loki whispers as Tony raises his head and reaches over to the nightstand, craning his neck to kiss at Tony's smooth collarbones and winding his lanky arms around the man's chest. Tony stops what he's doing to look at him again, his arm still outstretched towards the bedside table, and what Loki sees in his eyes is enough to send his heart flying through the floor.

It occurs to him then that they're an article away from being completely naked and still a bit damp from the rain and kind of sweaty and slightly ungroomed and a little hungover and sore from all the dancing they did last night and tangled together like two intertwining vines in the middle of Tony's absurdly rich, silken-sheeted bed – a bed they've laughed and talked and  _cried_  in more than they've even  _thought_  about having sex in – that what they're about to do is going to hurt some and things might crash and burn by tomorrow morning and everybody's going to know about them and Steve and Thor and Fandral and Kurt and Odin and Freyr and everyone else is still going to exist after they're done, that the two of them are generally a grand mess of a people and have no business existing together when they're basically the human equivalent of a firestorm and a blizzard and could rip each other apart as easily as they could heal every wound etched into their skeletons, but Loki doesn't  _care_ , can't even imagine things being any different or less imperfect than they are now, and he knows by the way Tony smiles at him that he doesn't care either.

"I love you, too," he says, dropping a quick, firm kiss on Loki's brow and ducking his head to nuzzle at his nose. "So much." Tony's voice is the kind of slurring and sweet that only ever accompanies honest, so-much-you-could-die sort of love, and that almost makes Loki never want to show his face to anyone but him ever again.

When Tony brings his arm back over, he's got a bottle of lube in his hand – something Loki's seen before when he's nursed him back to health and cleaned up around his house. He snaps the cap open and makes to start coating his fingers with the oily substance, but Loki grabs the tube from him before he can get a drop out, letting out a breathless, "Give me," and doing the job himself.

"Bossy…" Tony starts to say, a devious smirk crawling halfway onto his face before it's stopped and forced to go slack when Loki reaches down between his legs and probes a slick index finger against his already wet entrance. Tony's eyes flick between Loki's fingers and his face, his pupils nearly overtaking his irises in his lust, and he moves his hands to squeeze the flesh just above Loki's hips, rubs his thumbs into the dip of his loins and watches him as he slowly circles two fingers around his hole like it's the most captivating thing he's ever seen in his life.

"Oh my God," Loki hears him murmur when he carefully begins to slip the tip of his forefinger inside of himself, and he's able to catch the sharp hitch of Tony's breath even as his head tips back and he hisses through the initial anxiety and discomfort of being penetrated. He wills himself to relax a thousand times for every second that passes, lets his body arch into his own touch and impales himself deeper.

When he cracks his eyes open and peers at Tony from beneath the fringe of his lashes, the man looks like he's drowning in the sight of him.

"Don't lose it yet," Loki half-whispers, half-laughs, drawing Tony's eyes to his and smirking a bit. "I haven't even gotten to a second finger." Ironically, he starts to swirl another fingertip around his entrance just as he's punctuating that statement. He can only watch as Tony breaks down a little more than he already has in response.

"Can I kiss you?" Tony blurts, impossibly dazed and nearly bruising Loki where he's got him by the hips. When Loki simply smiles and chuckles quietly, he leans forward to peck at his chin, to trail soft butterflies down his jaw and to his ear, and Loki's groaning as he works a second and a third digit inside his own warmth, groaning as he moves his fingers in languid, easing thrusts, groaning as Tony babbles sweet nonsense into his skin, things like "You're so beautiful," and "How are you even real?" and "I want to take you apart."

As soon as Loki's found the part of him that makes him see stars with pleasure and has verbally made it clear that he's done preparing himself, Tony's practically ripping his underwear off, slicking himself up, and tugging Loki into his lap so that he can pull him up and kiss him properly on the lips, and Loki's got his arms wound around the man's shoulders and his fingernails digging into his back and his thighs spread astride his hips and his knees driven into the mattress, and there's thunder clapping in the distance as if to applaud the both of them when Tony aligns the head of his cock with Loki's entrance, absently brushes their lips together, and repeats himself like the skipping, scratched, delayed CD his mind turns into when they're together, "So much."

It's like the whole world is ripping itself in two when Tony slowly, carefully pushes himself inside. Loki's trying to tether himself to the feeling of the man's hands on his hip and the small of his back, but  _fuck_  is this uncomfortable, and even though he was expecting the pain, he can't help but whine through it and let out a quiet, breathless curse the moment Tony's bottomed out – " _Shit_."

"I'm hurting you," Tony says, his fingers tightening against Loki's skin and his words coming out like an imperative instead of a question. He's shaking with anticipation and watching Loki with the most torn look in his eyes, watching him like he's caught between handling him as cautiously as he would a porcelain doll and just fucking into him as aggressively as he possibly can, and the hazy darkness of his irises and pupils is something Loki would be perfectly okay with getting lost in, and a thought like that is sort of terrifying when it's running through  _his_ mind.

"No, no," Loki replies almost too fast, pressing his forehead into Tony's and briefly reveling in the thought of how their hair will tangle together the longer he keeps them there. He rolls his hips down the slightest bit, listens to the way Tony moans softly and feels the warm gust of breath that leaves the man pass over his lips as he pants, "I'm not going to break."

"But I don't want to hu–" Tony starts to argue, but he's quickly cut off when Loki pulls himself up to the tip of his cock and thrusts himself back down, insistent and wanting and nearly hyperventilating with impatience. That's all the encouragement it takes for him to wrap his arms around Loki, his fingers clutching at his shoulder and hooking around his hip, and start moving.

It's all clumsy and uncoordinated at first, both of them moving at different speeds with Loki fucking himself in short, desperate rolls and Tony attempting in vain to slow him down. They eventually find a rhythm, though, Tony letting Loki command every rock and thrust so long as he keeps a steady pace, and Tony's mouth is mapping the skin along the side of his neck and his shoulder, sucking hickeys all over the space he's whispered into on nights when Loki's felt generous or lonely enough to let him be intimate with him, and Loki's scratching shallow red lines into Tony's back and shivering at the feeling of being so full, letting out these tiny, self-conscious little moans of, "Ah,  _ah_ ,  _ **ah**_ ," every time Tony buries himself to the hilt inside him, and there the rain goes again, beating down on the roof and sending thunder rolling in time with every move they make.

Every few seconds, Tony will whisper into Loki's curls or kiss ' _I love you_ ' against his temple, and Loki will remember the time Tony laughed those words at him for the very first time without even thinking about it last November, or the time Tony laid his sweaty, shaking head in his lap and managed to choke out his feelings through his tears and his dripping lips only a month later, or the time he plastered nineteen stupid store-bought Valentines and one he made himself to his bathroom mirror last Valentine's Day when he'd been distracted by the very intentional mess the man had made in his kitchen, or the time Thor moved in with him two days before the semester started and Tony came barging in to save him but only ended up sitting with him in his backyard for two hours and letting him lie against his chest and telling him that things were going to be alright simply because he could still make Loki laugh with his silly, silly jokes that have been cheesier than Kraft Singles since the first time he started telling them. And Loki will remember that Tony is his best friend, and his best friend is loving him with every snap of his hips and pinch of his fingers, which are now pushing into his hair and wrapping around the back of his neck like two beautiful reminders of every instant they've touched him and made him realize that physical contact is  _okay_ , even preferable.

Tony presses their mouths together, coaxing his tongue between Loki's already parted, already damp lips and groaning when Loki tightens his grip on him and rocks them together a bit harder than he was before. Both of them are losing control, now, Tony's thrusts turning rough and forceful and erratic and Loki's teeth catching the man's top lip between them and his voice rising in both pitch and volume, especially when Tony shifts his angle just enough to hit him exactly where he wants and in a place that has him keening-moaning-gasping, "Oh  _fuck_ , there,  _please_ , Tony, _ **there**_  –"

"Come on, baby," Tony huffs, pushing upwards into Loki with the sole intention of getting him off, actions quick and frenzied and almost painful as he tangles his digits in the inky curls at the nape of his neck. "Come for me."

When Loki simply answers him with a high, breathless prayer of a moan, Tony grabs him almost bruisingly tight by the waist and holds him flush against him as he fucks into him, hard and fast and like an expert losing his touch in the sheer grandness of his endeavor, and they're shaking, and all Loki can hear is the sound of their skin slapping together and Tony murmuring nothing against his jaw and his own lungs trying to keep up with how fast his breath whistles out of him like a thief zipping through a crowd of angels and the rain and the rain and the  _rain_ , and _goddamn_ , he's fucking  _drowning_  in this, in how  _good_  this is and in how much he  _wants_ , in how much his thighs and hips ache and the too-sweet, too-heavy warmth spreading up from the core of him to his chest and his head until his heart is beating its way out of his rib cage and he's feeling dizzy with pleasure, and it hurts but it feels perfect all at once, and Tony's got his hands on his everything, and he's thinking about when Tony would slip out of one of their beds while he thought Loki was sleeping and come back and tell him that he dreamt about making love to him until he was crying with pleasure, and he's pretty sure he's on the verge doing just that when he sobs Tony's name and comes flying apart in his arms, head hanging over his shoulder, hair more damp with sweat than with rainwater, breath lost in the crook of Tony's neck, body quaking with his orgasm.

Loki's just managing to whisper, " _Tony_ …" into the barely-audible, barely-recognizable zone of absolute weightlessness he's finding himself in before Tony's lifting his ragdoll frame off of his lap, pushing him into the mattress, sliding between his thighs, and rutting against his pelvis, smearing his wetness in the hollow where Loki's leg meets his groin. Loki can only gaze up at the man, overwhelmed and close to tears, as he grinds himself to completion, his hands splayed at either side of his head and his expression so fucked-out and stupefied he almost looks lost, and Tony's pressing their brows together and coming with a choked moan in mere moments, his eyes dazed but undoubtedly focused on Loki's.

They stay like that, quivering and speechless and simply sharing oxygen, for what feels like an eternity and a half but is probably just a few minutes. Loki feels like he's only breathing half as much as he should be for the entirety of it, and the tightness in his chest doesn't get better even when Tony buries his face in his neck and leaves a slow, moist, openmouthed kiss right above his collarbone, even when Tony pulls away from him and stumbles out of bed with a mumbled promise of, "I'll be right back," and the air is all his to take in.

He realizes as soon as he's half-bathed in the light from Tony's bathroom that he's not breathing because he's going to cry, and he doesn't understand why he's crying; only that he is, and he doesn't know if he's tremendously elated or completely wrecked or both; only that he is.

When Tony comes crawling back onto the mattress and finds him staring at the ceiling with moisture on his face, he looks like a war of his own creation has just started and he's standing right in the middle of the battleground.

"What did I do?" he immediately asks. That brings a sad smile to Loki's face.

"Everything, silly," he whispers. "What makes you think that's a bad thing?"

Tony must remember the Facebook conversation they had yesterday morning, because he smirks ever so slightly at his words. "You're crying," he replies, leaning over him and swiping the washcloth he snatched from the bathroom over the mess of semen on Loki's abdomen. A small part of Loki is irritated at the gesture (hasn't it become pretty apparent by now that he  _hates_ being taken care of?), but he pushes it aside in favor of being lazy and gelatinous.

"I'm emotional," he says as if to correct Tony, blinking a tiny stream of tears down his temple and into his hair. Every part of him feels soaked – with sweat, with sex, with water, with rain, with _Tony_  – and when he tries to move, his hips start to scream fire at him like he's a burning building and there are people that need to get out of him before he collapses.

"You're always that way," Tony points out, carelessly tossing the washcloth over the edge of the bed before moving to lie next to Loki, on his side and with his head propped against his hand. His eyes sweep the length Loki's body – Loki can sense them – and he doesn't say anything more than that, but Loki can feel the energy thrumming through the man and radiating off of him and he knows he wants to touch him again – he's just not sure if he's allowed to.

Groaning softly at the discomfort of movement, Loki turns onto his own side to face Tony. Looking at him this way is different when they've just had sex, because it's not just the two of them lying in the middle of the mattress and talking about the nonsense that runs through their heads, it's the two of them in love and wondering what they are and being amazed at each other's existence and the fact that they've overlapped like they have. And Loki doesn't think he'll ever be the same when he sees Tony watching him like he's just bedded a god or an angel or something.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Tony murmurs.

Loki does.

"You  _are_  an angel," is what Tony laughs in response.

"That's not what you should have gotten from that," Loki hums, sniffling quietly, his voice damp and muted and his eyes dripping liquid aftertaste onto Tony's pillow. He reaches between them to thread his fingers with Tony's, tired of waiting for the man to realize that it's alright for them to touch. "I don't think I'm going to be the same now."

"Is that bad?" Tony asks, squeezing Loki's digits between his own.

Loki shrugs as much as he can in his position, says, "You tell me."

This surprisingly, unusually gentle smile slowly finds its way onto Tony's face after those three words have left Loki, and instead of answering him verbally, Tony closes the distance between them and kisses him, wraps his arms around his middle and pulls him close and tangles their limbs together and  _kisses_  him until he's shivering with tears and unable to breathe. And Loki thinks that his eternally changed state of being isn't bad at all.

"I love you," Tony whispers into the humid air around Loki's mouth. "I don't even know what the hell I was doing before I found you. I can't remember why I liked it so much."

"That's probably because you didn't like it at all," Loki notes, only a little anxious. Tony nips at his bottom lip, makes him smile for that.

"What made you come around?" Tony questions, and his word choice is crappy but the only way he can ask what he's trying to, and both of them know that, so neither of them get upset.

"I think it was you almost crying last Sunday because I had to leave," Loki answers. Tony laughs instead of getting embarrassed like Loki half-expected him to, laughs as he adds, "It was when I was driving home in tears that I realized I've probably been in love with you since July."

"What happened in July?" Tony chuckles, nuzzling their noses together and dropping a soft kiss on the skin above Loki's mouth.

"You drove us to the edge of town and we took pictures of each other because you knew how uncomfortable fairs made me and you were going to go with Pepper and Rhodey anyway," Loki says, sniffling again and mentally condemning his habit of getting a runny nose when he cries. "And then you spent that half a week at my house because I told you that I usually hated the summer because I had always gone through it alone, and you dragged me to Blockbuster and Wal-Mart and rented and bought all these movies that I said I wanted to see just because I wanted to see them." He gives Tony a tiny, pursed smile. "You know, I didn't even want  _Big Fish_  or  _Chaplin_  or  _Inception_. I just wanted to know if you'd still get them for me."

"You  _liked_  them," Tony indicates, and the fact that he doesn't even get affronted or indignant, not even for the sake of pretentiousness or getting under Loki's skin, is kind of beautiful. It really is.

"I'd always done that stuff for you, though," Tony goes on when Loki doesn't say anything. He gives him a somewhat inquisitive look, quirks an eyebrow the slightest bit. "What made July different?"

That throws Loki for a loop. He narrows his eyes in thought, racks his brain for an answer, but nothing comes to him save for the plan X assumption that he's most likely loved Tony longer than what makes sense to him and simply hasn't a clue how to identify his feelings when they're peering between books at him in the library or vomiting in his mother's toilet and cursing God and their father and God and their father and – more than anything – their  _father_  or singing him Whitney Houston karaoke in front of everybody he hates or driving him around at eleven o'clock at night for no apparent reason other than ' _I like you_ ' or simply walking up to him and presenting themselves as a complete an utter nuisance, a bug that needs to be smashed but refuses to die because it likes the way his eyebrows move when he gets irritated.

Tony seems to understand why Loki neglects to reply to his question, because instead of pushing him or waiting, he begins to talk about something else, and Tony likes to talk, and Loki likes to listen to him.

"Last night…" he starts to say, tightening his embrace around Loki and pausing to drop a soft kiss to his temple when he inhales a semi-sharp, apprehensive breath through his nose. "Last night, after I left your house, I felt like I was going to crash my truck and not care what happened when and if I did."

"Tony…" Loki whines quietly, wanting to say more but unable to when Tony is squeezing him and carefully trailing his mouth down his jaw. The only thing he  _can_  do is wind his arms around the man in turn, hold him close and listen to the way his breath leaves him in heavy, deep gusts of air.

"I thought about you, though," Tony goes on. "I thought about how you were hurting and I kind of wanted to crash that much more because of it." He laughs lowly, bitterly. "I thought about turning around and going to save you, but I knew that would have only fucked things up even more. I thought about the poem you read, and what you said about dying for love and how you said it and the look in your eyes when you did, and I thought that maybe you were telling me I was going to think things like that about you one day. Because I'm pretty sure I'd die for you." He turns his head just enough to look Loki in the eyes and smile. "Even if you wouldn't do the same for me."

Loki can't speak. He can't say a damn thing and he hates himself for it, but that's fine, because Tony keeps talking, and Tony likes to talk, and  _goddammit_  – Loki likes to listen to him more than he likes to do almost anything else in the world.

"I thought all these awful things about you," Tony concedes, and he's speaking bashfully now, speaking as if he's admitting to a horrible wrongdoing when in all actuality, he might as well be saying ' _I thought about you_ ', because that's the gist of what Loki hears. "I thought about… how drunk you were. And I don't think I like you drunk. I don't even like  _me_  drunk, but seeing you that way made everything worse. And I thought about every time I'd ever thought to myself that this was going to be the day you fell in love with me but you didn't, and I was so fucking scared that yesterday was going to be one of those days, except it'd have been the worst of those days because you let me in so much, and then you would have shut me out and been such a terrible person to me, but I still would have loved you and I still would have died for you, and I've never acted like that or felt like that about anybody." He lays his head in the crook of Loki's neck. "And I don't know why it's you, but it's  _you_  and I think you're perfect even though I know you're not and I could care less about anything going on in my life when you're crying and none of the bad things about you matter to me when you're smiling. And I think that more than you confuse and infuriate me, you make me feel happy and…" He pauses, and Loki listens to him swallow and struggle to get his words out, and in that moment, he feels like absolute  _shit_  because he knows Tony only feels like he has to say all this because verbal communication is where Loki's comfort zone is, and even though Tony likes to talk and Loki likes to listen, Tony would rather just make love to him all over again to tell him the things he's trying to choke out right now, and Loki  _knows_ that, and he feels like if Tony just kissed him for a few hours, he'd understand exactly what he wants to say.

"Tony–" Loki says at the same time Tony sighs, "You make me feel safe," and it makes sense why Tony would have such a hard time voicing that, because Tony Stark  _never_  feels safe, doesn't even know the definition of the word ' _safe_ ', and that makes Loki cry just a little bit harder.

"I thought about that when I got home," Tony says, quiet. "How crazy that is. I thought about how, for whatever reason, your atoms came together and made you, and you are a wild, unstable, hilarious thing that somehow makes me feel more than okay every time you cross my mind. I thought about how bits of you were still all around my house because you spend a lot of time here, and how all the photons of light that get caught in your eyes are still drifting around, and the particles you've disturbed when you've smiled, or danced, or ran your fingers through your hair, or when you've cooked or brushed your teeth or turned over when you've slept, and how much of the thermal energy you've given off still exists in this room, and how everything you've touched still has your DNA all over it, and I don't know how I put this all together, but I thought about how much of you is around me even when you're not physically with me, and that made it alright for me to go to sleep, and that's fucking  _insane_  when you're just one arrangement of atoms in trillions and I didn't even know if you loved me or not."

Tony moves away to look at Loki directly, and Loki finds himself holding his breath as the man brings a hand around to drag his thumb through the wetness beneath his eye. He realizes that Tony's wiped his tears for a whole year now, realizes how happy that makes him feel when the man kisses that moisture away and smiles into his skin.

"But I do love you," Tony mumbles against his cheek, pulling him close again. "And I'm going to love you no matter what happens or what you do to me. You can run me over with your car and I'd still give my life for you."

Loki laughs at the horror in that statement, squeezes his arms around Tony and kisses the spot below his earlobe and lets himself melt into the man's embrace as he replies, "Ditto."

The grin Tony gives him is enough to kill him twenty times over, and then some.

It's after Tony's pulled a comforter over them and snuggled into Loki's chest and just began to doze off when Loki's answer comes to him. He runs a gentle index finger along the curve of the Tony's shoulder and whispers his name, quietly so that he won't disturb him if he's entrenched deep enough in the slumber he most likely needs after having spent God knows how long mulling over his feelings last night.

"Hm?" Tony hums a few seconds later, unmoving.

"I think I know what made July different," he murmurs into Tony's hair. Tony lifts his head, peers up at him with half-lidded eyes and a lazy smile that easily has the potential to melt steel.

"Tell me," he whispers, his fingers idly thrumming at the base of Loki's back like he's a guitar needing to be played.

Loki cranes his neck just enough to touch he and Tony's foreheads together, watches Tony's eyes slide closed and his smile curl wider across his face as he says, "It's so easy for me to hate everything and everybody at that time of the year, and I didn't hate you – not one bit, not for one second. I didn't hate you at all."

"You loved me, right?" Tony drawls, not opening his eyes.

"More than anything," Loki promises. Tony kisses him, then, slow and deep and right into oblivion, until he can't even hear the rain over the sound of their mouths moving together.

~*~

It's drizzling when he wakes up. The whole room looks like it's been painted in shades of incandescent yellow and orange a few moments after he opens his eyes, and its usual colors of red and blue take awhile to show themselves, to divide themselves out of the sleep-tinted haze of his vision. It's warm, too, warm and like waking up in the nineties, when the heater was something Mother made sure to keep on all night so that everyone could wake up comfortably, and his head feels heavy and fuzzy where it lies. His hips and back are aching. His hair is a tangled mess. His skin crawls with dried sweat and water. He is alone.

Loki casts his eyes about the room, searching, but he doesn't find Tony. The man's computer is humming with power, though, not like it was when they first came tumbling in, and the lamp is switched on. Those are the only two signs of life or change Loki can find, and he realizes with something like adoration that Tony probably made sure not to disturb him when he got up. He smiles at the ceiling.

He's just sat up and prepared to roll himself out of bed when Tony appears in the doorway, a pair of sweatpants hanging off of his hips and a hand scratching through his wild hair. The man stops almost comically fast when he sees Loki's eyes, which are clearly open and focused on him, and several moments pass before he smiles another one of those oddly gentle smiles – things that almost  _never_  appear on  _his_  face – and ambles over to the side of the bed Loki's on. Loki can only return the smile for a second before Tony's sitting on the edge of the mattress and wrapping his arms around him and kissing him, hands like reminders, eyes like lightning rods.

He kisses him back, and it's the second time he feels genuinely happy today.

**Author's Note:**

> I always think of millions of things to say to you guys after I'm finished with the chapter, but every time I finish, I forget all of them.
> 
> I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry my life and my feelings have made it so hard for me to finish this in a timely fashion, but it's summertime again, so hopefully that will make it a lot, lot, lot easier for me to write my ass off like I so desperately want to and can't when school is taking the piss out of me.
> 
> Thanks/kudos to:
> 
> \- Arlet, my aye-aye baby – I really cannot thank you more for everything you've done and how happy you've made me, and I love you so that much I'm in tears typing this. You are fucking perfect.  
> \- Heather, my Clint – you are honestly one of my best friends, and even though I don't believe in God, I'm perfectly okay with thanking Him for possibly giving me a friend as amazing as you. My favie.  
> \- Lani, my Fandral – I cannot even express how much happiness you've given me and how much you've made me laugh and made me feel welcome and, no pun or joke intended, safe.  
> \- Courtney, my Thor – every time I think about how I found you and the things you said about Brothers before you even knew me, life gets a little bit brighter. You're one of my closest friends. You made it possible for me to do go so far. Thank you.  
> \- Kae, my Tony, I adore everything you do for me and everything you are and I couldn't ask for a more perfect friend and a more perfect Tony. I promise to write you soon. I love you dearly.  
> \- Zack – I'm not sure if you're reading this, but if you are, thank you, and sorry, and I love you. A lot.  
> \- Toni – I'm not sure if you're reading this either, but this is for you, too. You're perfect and I adore you.  
> \- Everybody else who reads this nonsense – thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Your comments mean the world to me even if I haven't been able to get to them immediately, I promise.
> 
> \- Gabi.


End file.
